Roman Rodomansky in Harvard Business Review

The article

In the magazine's How We Did It section, Roman tells in the first person how his company prepared for the war before it began, what happened on the first day, and how it kept working through the year after.

The podcast

In August, Roman talked it through with host Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast, Harvard Business Review's weekly podcast: why the team started planning months ahead, what they told clients and employees, and what any company can take from it.

Roman also spoke at HBR Live, Harvard Business Review's virtual event, in May 2023.

What happened

1. December 2021

   A plan for the worst

   As troops gathered at the border, the leadership team drafted a business continuity plan in three stages, green, orange and red, each with triggers for people's safety, business infrastructure and clients. Some were skeptical; the team decided together to prepare anyway.

2. Before the invasion

   Getting ready

   Starlink terminals and generators so people could work through power cuts, cloud backups of all the work, a record of where everyone was, workshops on emergency bags and mental health, and hiring abroad already under way.

3. February 24, 2022

   The red stage

   A pre-written email went to every client that day. People could work part time in the first weeks, and the company helped families move from Kyiv to western Ukraine, a drive of five hours that now took 20 or more.

4. Two weeks later

   Back above 80%

   Everyone who could work logged the hours they could commit each day, so the company could measure its output rather than guess it. Within about two weeks it was back above 80%.

5. The year that followed

   Every client stayed

   Weekly updates for clients and weekly Q&A sessions for the team, a seven-person emergency team spread across countries, and a year's salary paid to an engineer who volunteered for the army. No client cut a team or stopped a project.

6. 2023

   The story in HBR

   Roman's article ran in the July–August issue, and he told the story on HBR IdeaCast in August.

Lessons for any crisis

• Plan for every scenario. Green for the hopeful case, orange for the likely one, red for the worst, and get ready for red. Believing in one future doesn't remove the need to be ready for the others.
• Decide fast. In the first days, every decision put off cost twice as much the week after.
• Communicate openly and often, with clients and with the team, on a fixed rhythm.
• Put people first. “Without people there is no company.” If they follow you, support them and keep their trust.
• Think a few steps ahead. Hiring abroad had started before the war, so the processes were ready when they were needed.
• Calm your mind before you decide. Roman's personal advice: first make yourself feel safe and calm, then make the decision.

Why it's on this site

AI Adoption Score measures the human side of change: how people work, what they can do, and what holds them back. The habit behind it runs through this story. In the first weeks of the war the company didn't guess how it was doing; it asked people every day what they could commit to, and knew within two weeks that output was back above 80%.

Roman builds AI Adoption Score. See how he measures AI adoption in his DevWorld talk, Measuring AI Adoption Across People & Orgs (opens in a new tab), or who else is behind the product (opens in a new tab).