How One Ukrainian Company Cultivated Resiliency Amid War

AI is transforming the world and it starts with the right compute. ARM is the AI compute platform trusted by global leaders. Proudly NASDAQ listed, Built for the future. Visit arm.com discover. Welcome to the hbr ideacast from harvard business review. I'm kurt nickish. Crisis management is something we've all become more familiar with, especially following the pandemic. What used to only happen once in a while for a few companies has now become more pervasive. Companies have had to figure out strategies to be resilient and adaptive in the face of all kinds of threats. There's a huge spectrum. Perhaps none is as serious as war. When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, millions of workers and thousands of organizational leaders suddenly had to find a way to adapt in the face of incredible adversity. Today's guest is one such leader. Roman Rodomansky is the COO and co founder of RA Labs, a software development company based in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. He wrote the HBR article a co founder of RA Labs on leading a Ukrainian startup through a year of war. He joins me now. Welcome.

Hello Kurt. Happy to be here and thanks for the invitation.

Tell us a little bit more about RA Labs and what you do there.

Yes. So ralabs is an agency that provided software development services. We are focused mostly on healthcare domain. We worked with NHS, it's National Health Service in UK and many other clients from Europe, UK and US. The company was launched around seven years ago when I was 27 together with my partner Andrew. The company is right now around approximate 100 in house employees. My formal role is CEO and I'm responsible for internal processes. It's mostly I'm managing delivery, it's working with current clients, hiring HR and overall just operation excellence.

What was it like before the war in terms of scaling the company? And as coo, what problems were you solving?

So before the war, before 2022, the company size was around 80 employees. So we already were on this phase when the COVID started. So the company was pretty remote friendly. We already had a lot of employ working remotely. We set up remote hiring. So we started working with different new locations like Europe, like Costa Rica, like Mexico. So we were trying to hire people from those areas. At this time most of our employees were still based on the west of Ukraine. So mostly it was west of Ukraine and Kyiv.

In 2022, you and the rest of the world saw Russia amassing troops along the Ukrainian border and no one really knew if this was just a show of force or for real. For a long time. What was your Reaction to it as an organizational leader.

So we had like this pre invasion stress that's mostly related to our Ukrainian team for people who based in Ukraine. And we had external stress that means some questions and concerns from our clients. So our Ukrainian team was stressed about the possibility of war. To mitigate all of those risks, we prepared, I think it was maybe two months before. So it was maybe, maybe early December. We started preparing some draft of BCP plan, business continuity plan.

Got it. This is December of 2021. Yeah.

Yes, correct. So like few months before full scale invasion.

So you're describing the stress and it's also very uncertain, right?

Sure, yeah.

Was there part of you that thought maybe we don't need to be doing this or were you pretty firm in your commitment that you needed to prepare pretty heavily for what, what was an uncertain outcome?

Well, definitely like some of the people were skeptical about this. Other people were like believe into this maybe more than others. But talking about our company, we have. So we have kind of collegial decision, like final decision is always on me or my partner. But except of this behind of this we have a team called core team. So it's the head of departments are included on this team. We just decided to take a collegial decision that we accept this risk and we started preparing to this risk.

Were you following best practice from other companies or was this kind of uncharted territory and you were just doing what was logical and made sense to you as a, as a leader?

I would say that first of all, me and my partner, we have a few mentors we quite often talk with. Our mentor, for example, one of those is VP from quite large software company. We also regularly in touch with other founders of other companies. So it's helped us to, you know, to understand the situation on the market. So we are kind of like almost always up to date. We know what other companies are doing, we know what other founders are planning to do and what, what the like average situation on the market.

So it sounds like you were pretty well networked. You really leveraged your network to get good information. You're doing a lot of things that a lot of big companies and a lot of big corporations do because they have crisis management plans. You call this bcp? Can you explain that?

Yeah. So BCP is business continuity plan. In our case we split our business continuity plan to three stages. It was green, orange and red. And each stage it has specific triggers. For few groups it was like people, security, business infrastructure, business environments related to clients and appropriate actions we should take. So on the news. According from news we know amount of troops or the borders. So based on that we can predict in which stage we are on the green or orange or red. So for example, on the February, on the day of when the war started, that's obviously our BCP plan was triggered on the red on the red stage. And so our appropriate actions were also triggered.

What were conversations like with your external partners and your clients? Because you mentioned the external stress. What, what were you telling them weeks.

Before the war happened? When. When we have this like first science for some of the current customers, they started asking some questions like what will you do if something will happen? Like what will you do if Russia will declare the war? So we transparency shared what actions we are planning to do in advance. So we keep our clients updated with our continuity plan. We also were always focused on the people and people security. So we were always showing to our clients that people are the most priority of the company and keep their safety. And that's probably it. So we had very regular communication with client. I believe it's maybe on the weekly basis. Same it was for internally with our employees. We had regular Q and A. It was probably on a weekly basis just to answer any questions our employees have. We prepared emergency response team. So that's a team that consists I believe for the seven people and they were located in different areas of the world. Clients always knows that in case of any emergency on the project, we have this emergency team that with some like small response time can always help and assist with the project just in case if something will be unexpectedly happened with their team or with their project.

Yeah, well you did a lot of things like buying Starlink Internet consoles for your employees, generators so that they could keep working if electricity went out, keeping track of where people were and also cloud storage and security backups for all of your work. So a lot of those things were in place when February 24, 2022 came around and Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border. What was it like at that moment for you and how did having a plan in place change how you felt?

So yes, on the first days, I mean when war started, we already have prepared before this day we already have prepared like email template for our customers. So we just execute this email to our clients so our clients understood that they can rely on us for the first weeks. We also give allowance to our employees to work on the part time basis since people need just to take care about their relatives and their personal security. And I should say it might sound again strange but people maybe it Took a week, maybe maximum two weeks. When the performance for the whole company get back to the previous level. I remember on the daily basis we were asking people who are ready to work, just to track working hours. We were asking everyone who ready to commit to the work and amount of hours people can work. So we were able to measure amount of performance for the company. As I remember, maybe in two weeks, the performance of the company was a bit more than 80%. So most of majority of the people, they were back to the work.

Did that surprise you?

Yes, definitely yes.

Now you had to do some things like salaries were frozen at the time. There's obviously a lot of cost to going part time, to making these purchases, to allowing for all of the things that you had to allow for. And you're also working with employees who have real fear about their own safety and that of their families and just the, you know, the state of their nation. How do you as a leadership team communicate with employees around these. These anxieties and these fears? What was your communication strategy?

So before were the happening, some of the employees and also with their families, they relocated abroad. Some of the people decided to stay here. So talking about those people who stayed here, we had regular and transparent communication with people. So we sent on the day when war began, we just sent prepared email that listed some useful information about the company, about the infrastructure, about the office, about the finance. So a lot of information that might be helpful to people. Before the war, we made a lot of events like internal events. They were about how to prepare your emergency back or mental trainings. So I believe it helps people. We also helped this relocation to two families from the Kyiv, for example, from the capital. We had few employees in Kyiv, so we helped them to relocate to the west of Ukraine. But it was not easy because like technically leaving Kyiv was not easy because a lot of people was trying to leave Kyiv, right? So a lot of people like a lot of traffic. So I know people usually rode from Kyiv to Lviv. It takes let's say five hours driving car. And on that base it might take like 20 hours or even more. So technically it was pretty quite hard to leave the. The cities at the first days. We also had. I would like just to add that at first day we also had one employee, it was QA engineer. So he joined volunteer of the army probably from the first weeks of the invasion. So we, we prepared this policy and annotate a policy for employees who would like to be mobilized, I mean voluntary. And for the first year we paid his salary for him. So it was our support.

A lot of people dispersed or went in different places, but other people are still in the same offices. How do you gather as employees now and how do you build culture and relationships after so much change for so many people?

So what you should know about relapse, that we invest a lot into relations with people. And I'm talking about both clients and employees. So for employees, we were always trying to keep transparency with people so employees knows about company plans, company goals. We have such activity called monthly digest. It's all hands meeting where all of the employees joining and each department just sharing news and plans, like news from the previous month and plans for the next months. We also continue doing internal events. We also continue supporting people like education. We have internal mentoring program. So we have a lot of learning and development activities. We have a lot of like internal mental activities that help people to, you know, to keep high performance.

I mean, your business climate changed as well, right? There are sanctions against Russia, for instance. And so that's shifting as well. Your whole, your whole competitive landscape. How do you set business goals as it's been shifting and as things could continue to change?

You're correct that some of the clients, they migrated from Russia to Ukraine. I cannot say it was a large, you know, large pipe of the clients, like all of the. Our clients. That's completely like 100 percentage of our clients. They support us fully company. They didn't like decrease a team or stop the project. So they continued support Ukraine and us as a company. You know, we haven't failed this trust or we haven't failed relations because I believe that's. Because that's paid off. Our preparement, that's BCP plan, you know, to keep the performance of the team good and the quality of service on the same level as it was before the war. But talking about goals, you're correct that it's changed. So before I think our focus was how to grow. So we were trying to find tactics and strategies how we can grow up and become more mature. Now I would say that probably focus is more to stabilize company, make it more stable. Yeah, but still I would say that there are a lot of clients that continue to support Ukraine, especially those clients who has some previous relation with Ukraine. They worked with Ukrainians. They know the culture of people. They know how people are motivated. They are like hard working. So they are ready to continue work with, with Ukrainians. Some of the clients asking to balance and split team between people who are located in Ukraine and between. It might be, for example, Ukrainians based in Europe, we have also a few cases like this. We are very grateful to our clients for all of the support.

What advice do you have for others who may not face a crisis like this, but have to prepare for uncertainty in the future or potential crises, whether it's a natural disaster or fires, government instability, where they are. What's your advice?

My personal advice. It's not like business advice, but personal advice. And what helped me is to first of all calm the mind and create the maximum good conditions for yourself in which you will, you will feel safe and calm. And after you just make decisions in a calm and safe conditions, it helps you just to keep your mind calm and make proper decisions. But talking about the business, that's definitely scenario planning. I mentioned that our BCP plan has three stages, green, orange and red. So green is something optimistic, orange is something, let's say realistic, and red is something very pessimistic scenario. So we were always preparing to the worst case scenario. You asked before that if we had any team members that believe in one version of the future scenario. So that's correct. But believing in one version of the future scenario does not negate the need to be prepared to any other possible scenarios. So probably the second advice would be scenario planning. I would say that first, especially days we made a lot of quick decisions. So probably quick decision making. A lot of decisions we didn't make in these days, they cost twice like in the next week. So every problem must be solved quickly and with dignity. Transparent communication with team, it should be prioritized. It's very important. I should add that without people there is no company. People always need to be valued. If they follow you, if they work with you, then they believe in you and your company. So you should always support them and keep like trust and relations with them. And probably one more. It's also thinking a few steps ahead. For example, we started hiring abroad a bit before then war started. So we were kind of ready, our processes were in place, so we were ready to hire people abroad.

Well, you talked about personally making decisions when you were calm of mind. And it sounds like all this preparation for the organization helped the organization make a lot of decisions in a calm manner. What's your hope for the future of the company?

I think our hope is not only to survive, but also grow up and become more mature as a company, as a business. I was reading like Antifragile by Nassim Taleb and he has a good phrase about crisis, that each crisis makes us stronger. But giving more specific answer. I think we want to attract several large health scale clients. We want to retain as much as possible our employees. We want to grow in headcount and for sure we will continue to support the army of Ukraine.

Roman, thank you so much for coming on the show to talk about your company story.

Yeah, thank you Kurt. It was a pleasure talking with you today.

That's Roman Rodomansky. He's the COO and co founder of RA Labs, a software development company based in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. He wrote the HBR article, a co founder of RA Labs on leading a Ukrainian startup through a year of war. And we have more episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization and your career. Find them at hbr.org podcasts or search HBR and Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. This episode was produced by Mary Dew. We get technical help from Rob Eckhart. Our audio product manager is Ian Fox Fox and Hannah Bates is our audio production assistant. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Kurt Nickish.