One of the most significant 2020 objectives set out by Volga-Dnepr Group is to create an industry Knowledge Center – a team of best experts in the Airfreight Industry Knowledge Center. We had a talk with A.I. Isaykin, the President and CEO of Volga-Dnepr Group about this strategic objective; about what exactly the knowledge is and the ways how to transfer this knowledge and what kind of knowledge he would personally transfer to the Knowledge Center on the first priority basis.

– Imagine that the Company has already created the Airfreight Industry Knowledge Center. Please describe what it looks like and what the principles of its work are.

– First of all it is a natural part of the corporate education system centered around the Corporate University. Education is impossible without a substantial knowledge depository. I would compare the Knowledge Center with a bee hive: employees like bees sip the “knowledge honeydew” and store it. Then when it’s necessary this “knowledge honeydew” is used for “food” supply. My dream is to see the Knowledge Center stirring and buzzing – an actively working area where employees come to share their knowledge, a place to preserve skills in one form or another, a location where the best knowledge could be taken to satisfy particular requirements.

We do know that bees produce honey not for their own survival only; normally the stock is abundant enough to treat external clients. Therefore the industry-wise assignment speaks to the fact that the knowledge will be available outside of our Company and accessible both for our competitors and other industry players. The reason is one and only: exchange of knowledge is always useful for knowledge itself making the Company and individuals richer in this respect. It is important to understand that we can only bring value to our customers if we possess and operate knowledge essential for such customers. In all therefore I must say that Customers are our Knowledge Center key audience, then, down this list goes our Vendor audience and all others who may be interested in our activity: Scientists, Researchers etc.

I am convinced that right after our Knowledge Center becomes functional, our attractiveness and potential usefulness for customers will redouble. On the other hand it will really make us more able to meet competition challenges from the industry and probably not the Airfreight Industry only.

– And what is your understanding of ‘knowledge’? How could it be transferred?

– Knowledge is the information about what provided benefit to our customers in the past (the experience), what provides benefit to them today and what will be done for that tomorrow. This also refers to a New Knowledge category: the one which did not exist in the past. I mean something that we have invented ourselves, found as a result of scientific investigations and practice or received from other sources. For our purpose the general Global Knowledge can even be dangerous and harmful since it is unfocused on our customers’ values. I will clarify what I mean: in our knowledge treasury customers would not be seeking anything about food industry for example or medications. What they expect to get is the knowledge of their concern: how the cargo could be relocated from one point to another safe and at minimum cost, how we did it before, how we do it now and how are we going to do it in future.

I hold to the idea that knowledge should be special but at the same time it must not be one-dimensional. To fulfill our assignment, I mean to be able to deliver products of other people’s labor from the point of manufacture to the point of use, we should know a lot of things. Such fundamental and universal knowledge should create the basis and should be sufficient to form special knowledge on such foundation. It is absolutely evident that we are not going to collect information about great discoveries in physics or astronomy for example because it will be viewed as unpractical, senseless and useless burden. However, when such knowledge is linked with our customers’ needs, then may be by 2030 we will receive a task order to carry cargo to the Moon for example. And then we must be able to use our knowledge store-room to retrieve what we would need to accomplish this task. I mean the knowledge that helped us to be useful to our customers in the past helps us at the present time and will help us in the future.

– How to set priorities in such a big amount of knowledge and information? How do you do that?

– All is simple: we look at our customers and try to understand the points of their concern in the area of our competence then we check what we have in our practically empty knowledge store-room, what is available in the World, then we select the required knowledge and set it to work. If at this point the customer needs a pharmaceutical freight service it is evident that we must collect the relevant knowledge and bring it to shape that would help us render the service practically. And it is wrong if we get an inquiry for a pharmaceutical freight service but start investigating the way how to bring cargo to the Moon with an understanding that the service would probably be highly demanded in some ten or more years from now but not at the moment.

One of my might-have-been endeavors is to have a scientific center, which would be doing an advance search and advance marketing research: I mean giving answers to questions like what our customers will be interested in some ten or twenty years from now. The design bureau is the core of this scientific center, which will give the answer to the question what services we will render to our customers in the future and which types of aircraft we will use for that purpose. We have to argue against the proverb “We know not what is good (to keep)” and prove in practice that we act in reverse to such saying: “We do know what is good (to keep).

It is universally important to get confirmation that the knowledge is steadily consistent same as quality of services offered. It is very often emphasized, especially in the merchandize industry, that ‘our company was established very long time ago’ meaning that such an old-existing venture has a full stock of skills and knowledge that would make you rely on predictable result and anticipated quality of goods and services. But it only works when the knowledge transfer mechanisms are functional inside such companies.

– What is your personal knowledge that you would like to transfer to the Knowledge Center first?

– In the first instance it is new acquired knowledge of Labor as a Human Activity that brings value to other people. Then goes more specific knowledge that Marketing is a special part of Labor based on continuing investigation of the value we brought and could be bringing to customers, that it is not a science for the sake of science but rather an absolutely practical and useful thing. It is important for economists and financiers to deliver knowledge that your and your colleagues’ labor planning and evaluation is not just pure figures but rather your labor assessment, expressed in figures. Unfortunately it is a hard challenge for specialists and experts in this functionality, which means that they do not value the tools at their disposal which would help them provide complete evaluation of labor.

When it comes to managers their assignment is to hold responsibility for making the work done by their reporting personnel turned into labor. In doing so they must be real masters of all the tools starting with division of labor, specialization, employees’ cooperation, rules of interaction and collaboration. My everlasting desire is to feed the managers with the minimum scope of knowledge or provide them with a sort of Management Enlightenment. Such minimum must be known and applied by managers who execute control and manage their employees’ labor. That is exactly what constitutes a manager’s assignment: make their employees labor rather than work. My responsibility as a leader is to share my vision of the future and the strategy of achieving the goals set for the future.

– Ideally functioning knowledge system– how do you see it?

– First of all, ideally means without enforcement. This is an in-depth understanding of how important it is for any employee to obtain knowledge, preserve it and transfer it in the right time. This is an understanding that by sharing knowledge an employee is becoming even more valuable for the Company. But at present time the predominating situation is quite opposite: by sharing knowledge an employee prepares his/her own ‘funeral’ – trains / educates someone who will replace him/her in the future. Ideal condition is when the knowledge system and its services are in fact the main attractive elements of the services we provide, the main competitive advantage and the basic characteristics especially valued by our customers. This means that customers will not only get a shipping service but also the answers to their questions; they will get a sense of comfort from dealing with professionals. When you deal with well-prepared people you feel pleased when communicating with them, feel confident that what is being offered to you is performed in a legal way, not fraudulently.

– Scientific and technical magazine ‘Knowledge is Power’ has been issued since 1926 under Francis Bacon’s slogan “Knowledge Itself is Power”. And what in your opinion is the power of knowledge?

– Power is a physical and philosophic concept at the same time. In first case it can be attributed to our airplanes: professionals and general public always take off their hat to our large air freighters, which lift up in the sky hundreds of tons of payload. Naturally, before an airplane appears to the world, an enormous amount of knowledge has to be accumulated. This is where the direct link is found: knowledge is first and then comes material result followed by the demonstration of power. And the philosophic concept of power is that when you get knowledge the impossible becomes possible. Getting back to a definition of labor we can say that it is a power of salvation borne by knowledge which shields us from many troubles, from what initially seemed impossible. Literally 100-150 years ago human life was half as short as now, the quality of life was absolutely different and during the recent one hundred years knowledge has become salvation for hundreds of millions of people. But a very important component is missing from this epigrammatic formula ‘Knowledge is Power’, namely: the necessity to continuously consume power. This dynamic component is very important: by consuming power you not only regenerate it but also build it up with the help of knowledge. So knowledge is not instant, it can only exist in uninterrupted motion and modernization.

Approximately fifteen years ago there were a lot of disputes in the Company hinting that ‘we don’t need no education, we were perfectly educated while in the Soviet Union, which is sufficient till we retire’. This fundamental delusion caused us a lot of serious problems: degradation of engineering knowledge as well as in some other areas. We lost some specialties and specialists for economy and labor performance standards: simple things that used to be done easily are being maintained with grate effort now since we are unable to find proper experts in this area.

That is why I always said and keep on saying now: when you get knowledge the impossible becomes possible!