Vladimir Gerasichev’s Punch of Responsibility
Vladimir Gerasichev is standing on a moonscape with a red punching bag swinging in the air. He is illustrating how stepping away from the idea of resistance is not a weakness but a strength that will help you achieve your goals.
This is scene from his film Life - User’s Guide and it is classic Gerasichev advice: it’s both dramatic and pragmatic. His beliefs are rooted in the idea of individual responsibility. First comes an honest reckoning through a process of prioritization of what we wish for, and then taking action to achieve those goals. He likes to quote the Yankee’s catcher Yogi Berra: “In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
A punching bag as a business advice? As unusual as it may sound, Gerasichev’s off-beat coaching is highly sought after by global brands such as AIG, Adidas, Schwarzkopf and Henkel, Ernest and Young, and Red Bull. In May of 2018 his importance as a business coach was recognized when he was given the coveted Corporate Culture Award from the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce. Mark Jaffe, the President and CEO, said, “Vladimir Gerasichev of Busi- ness Relations is exactly right when he suggests that; “if you want to do World Trade at a high level, you must take the time to understand the different International Corporate Cultures involved in the business deal”. Although his coaching is grounded in making individual, personal changes, they influence, as the Chamber of Commerce recognized, the culture of the companies as well. His coaching team Business Relations acts, he says, “like a mirror. We give them the possibility to see how they work, and then the possibility to make a shift.”
He advises companies to shift their culture in the face of economic crisis. In The Moscow Times he wrote about the importance of not reacting to an economic crisis from a place of fear and uncertainty, which can lead to rash decision-making. Instead he counsels a well-defined corporate culture of partnership, openness, honesty and integrity. If those qualities are instilled in the company before the crisis hits they will persist afterwards as well. As a result the company can make decisions proactively, rather than reactively, and see a “crisis” as an opportunity rather than as a catastrophe. This is extremely helpful advice in our current world of economic uncertainty.
Gerasichev’s brand of coaching is rooted in American ideas of agency. He was first exposed to these ideas in 1990 when the business guru Werner Erhard gave a talk in the former Soviet Union. “The guy was like a god. It was like he came from another planet.” Erhard was talking about individualism at a time when toeing the communist party line was still the de facto mindset for business. “He was speaking to us as if were in a freethinking country.” He found this liberating.
Gerasichev was primed to understand these ideas as a result of living in New York a child when his father, a reporter, was working for Russian State TV and Radio. Along with his obsession with personal self-improvement, the seeds were also implanted for Gerasichev’s love of American rock music and movies. It’s not accidental that his biography on his website is not a dry list of achievements but a personal riff on The Knack’s “My Sharona”, AC/DC, and the movies Groundhog Day and the off-beat Wachowski brother’s film Bound.
One of the chief reasons why he has been so successful is that he knows how to speak to his generation, the generation when kids in London, Paris and Moscow were listening to Elton John and U2 (when they could get their hands on the records). These kids are grown up now and they are doing business with each other on a global scale. As a re- sult his message of individual responsibility, which he first heard in 1990, is even more relevant in our interdependent and more volatile world.