Guiding Lines: Men, Watch Out!

Russian firms involved in commercial, as well as residential real estate, with women at the helm, is hardly a rare phenomenon, but, remarkably, the image of those companies is much more masculine.

Almost none of the so-called Big Four group of leading real estate consultants, with Knight Frank pushing to establish a Big Five, has such superwomen among their top executives.

Those Valkyries opt to start businesses on their own, either from scratch or after leaving the firms where they worked unable to put up with their male bosses any longer.

Back in the 1960s the British pamphleteer C. Northcote Parkinson suggested that companies can be either masculine or feminine. One of the criteria for classification was the interior design of an office, which is still worthy of attention even today. “Female” offices are usually well-groomed and luxurious while “male” offices are strict, austere and, sometimes, untidy.

Nonetheless, if there is a hostile (or friendly) merger between two companies with different sexes, the top managers from the male company are likely to take the more senior posts in the newly established firm than the top managers from the female company, regardless of sex.

It is enough to just look at the executive offices of certain major bosses. Some have succeeded in preserving male traits in their interior. But in many such rooms the pile height of carpets, table width and height of ceilings go beyond the bounds of reason, evoking associations with vanity.

But those lucky ones who succeed in breaking through the three security barriers at the Inteko head quarters to visit the office of the Moscow mayor’s wife Yelena Baturina, or those unlucky ones summoned there for a dressing-down, will be surprised to see her desk in perfect order, paper-bin empty, and tea served immediately by excellently trained staff.

The office of Irina Radchenko, general director of the firm Laurel, is hardly spacious but it is comfortable to work in and hold discussions with clients.

Yelena Dranchenko, who used to head the Moscow Association Guild of Realtors and the Russian Guild of Realtors, has had many offices but, being a former Komsomol worker, has always remained true to her own firm – the Yenisei agency.

On the whole, regardless of the femininity and charm of those bosses, the interior design of their offices says more about their strength of mind and austere style of work inherent in masculine companies.

And male executives will have to decide for themselves what they have to do and how they should furnish their offices in conditions where they have to compete with female colleagues, no less educated and at times even better educated than they are.