Business in Russia: A Different World.

IF YOUR COMPANY EXPECTS to do any business with the developing businesses in post-Communist Russia, plan on entering a different world. Many of the practices you may take for granted here in Arkansas do not apply.

Most obvious are the physical differences between Russian and American infrastructure. Westerners are inclined to think that dilapidated office buildings are a result of the collapse of Communism. This is just not the case. In Russian culture, there is no tradition of maintaining buildings once they are built.

With the possible exception of some parts of Moscow, there is also no tradition of cutting the grass. This time of the year, the grass (or weeds) may be two to three feet high around an office building. It is just taken for granted that is what grass looks like at this time of the year.

You will find that Russians tend to waste no time in getting down to business. For instance, they do not have anything like the business lunch. Your first meeting with the representative of a business will be in the office, without an introductory "working lunch."

Another difference you may notice is the speed with which a Russian business can act. One of the companies I visited concluded that they could substitute soy extract for the milk sugar in their product, thereby broadening the product's appeal to diabetics and people who were lactose intolerant.

I thought that we were talking about concepts for the future.

To my surprise, the next morning I was informed that the soy extract was being unloaded, that a test batch would be produced later that same day and that paperwork was under way to get government approval to put the revised product on the market. I doubt that any American businesses make and implement decisions that quickly.

At the same time, Russians seem to have trouble understanding what it takes to enter into international trade. Being part of the C.I.S. block, they essentially have free trade among all of the former Soviet republics. That there may be restrictions on trade with other nations is not something that readily comes to their minds.

While in Novosibirsk in the heart of Siberia, I met with businessmen who wanted to exhibit food products at an international trade fair in Cologne, Germany, but they had no idea that their products would have to meet German import food standards in order to bring them into the country.

Conducting business research is also a new thing for these businesses. Telemarketers often are greeted with skepticism by the potential customers who are called. They tend to think that survey research phone calls are crank calls. As a result, marketers place much more emphasis on "stop interviews" or what we call mall intercept interviews.

No matter how different you find the Russian business world, keep in mind that they are trying hard to compete in their own marketplace and want to look beyond their own backyard for future business. When one young Russian equivalent of a Harvard MBA student told me that "in five years we will be in New York," I was inclined to believe him. If you have the interest or the opportunity to do business with them, expect it to be different, but also expect it to be business focused on the bottom line, as you would want it to be.

Joe Whalen is the senior project manager at Flake-Wilkerson Market Insights and has just returned from two weeks in Siberia as a volunteer with a U.S. Aid pro gram administered by Winrock International.