Workplaces: Viktor Chekanov, CEO of the online cinema Megogo in Russia

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

“I have the courage to do more” - this is the life credo of our today's guest. Viktor Chekanov runs the world's largest Russian-language video service. At his workplace, only the essentials. He tries not to waste time on nonsense and to fill his day as much as possible. In the morning he drinks a glass of water with vitamins and regularly goes in for sports. More about all this - in an interview with Victor.

What do you do in your work?

For four years now I have been managing the Russian segment of the high-tech and world's largest Russian-language video service. By "high-tech" I mean a multi-screen service available in all countries of the post-Soviet space, with the ability to view Russian-language content anywhere in the world. We are also pioneers in the delivery of video and TV content for VR devices.

What is your profession?

You will never guess what my profession is. When people hear who I am by education, they are very surprised and exclaim: “How did an ecologist come to be engaged in high technologies and distribution of legal content ?!”.

Just choosing a profession is not always a one-way process. This requires "mutual chemistry." Sometimes a profession chooses you, and you understand that you are interested in it.

After graduating from university, I was drawn to something new - I came to a company that later became known under the Yota brand. And even then, in 2008, we started working on VOD and online TV services.

Is it worth spending five years of your life on an academic education?

It costs a lot more time to spend on education than five years of life. It is necessary to study only as long as a person lives. While we are learning something, we are developing. Understand this truth and start your path to new knowledge.

For me, one of the scariest things you can imagine is waking up in the morning and realizing that you have stopped developing. This is a classic degradation.

It is common for many people every three, five or seven years to feel the need for knowledge that will help make another personal breakthrough. Therefore, people receive additional education, whether it be courses or the second, third, tenth tower.

But everything has its time. So, after university, I gave up my postgraduate studies. And a few years ago he received an MBA in strategic management. Soon I plan to continue my (academic) education again.

What should a person working in your field know and be able to do?

In addition to professional knowledge of how the VOD market works, it is very important to have a certain set of human qualities.

Not everyone will be able to feel comfortable in an IT company. In our sphere, people live in a system of burning deadlines and a constant "arms race". Moreover, when a company develops in the right way, when strategically correct benchmarks are chosen, goals and objectives for the business are correctly set, for the most part it competes not so much with other services as with itself. In this regard, the people working in this company are competing with themselves tomorrow, who they will only become.

There is always a very high bar before us. You must always be collected, be able to respond in a timely manner to external stimuli and sometimes unpleasant coincidences of circumstances. A person should have a high level of responsibility, even if he is just a department assistant.

What are your strengths and weaknesses?

I'll start with the strong ones:

• Purposefulness, which in business is embodied in purposefulness.
• Sociability, which has been modified into the ability to distribute responsibility between participants in business processes and share success with others.
• Believe in yourself. It is very important, because with age, this trait is transformed into confidence in what you are doing. No project has ever been successful without inner self-confidence.

There is one more trait that most would attribute to the weak side of the personality, but I consider it strong: it is difficult for me to separate personal and work. I have worked with friends, I am friends with colleagues and I find it hypocritical to behave differently at work and outside. Such non-division both hinders and helps. But for me, as a person who lives 24/7 work, this is still another plus point to really effective communication.

People who are open to the world inspire me.

Weak sides:

• Emotionality. This is a twofold feature. On the one hand, it is useful: it is the ability to openly express one's emotions, to share joy with others, emotional people charge those around them with energy. But, on the other hand, emotionality sometimes plays a cruel joke with its owner. After all, we also project negative emotions onto others, and the reason is not always associated with the person who fell under the hot hand.
• Sometimes I am wrong about people. This does not mean that I do not understand them, but often I rely more on external and verbal criteria for assessing people than on intuitive ones, and this has led me to disappointment more than once.

What does your workplace look like?

I love junk-free jobs. A laptop, a pen and a sheet of paper are enough for me without any souvenirs, photo frames and what may be superfluous in work.

I always have my phone with me (iPhone 6, 128 GB). This is natural, he is my mini-computer. This is my opportunity to be always mobile. I have a laptop in the office and at home, I rarely carry it with me. For travel - MacBook Air 11 ″, 512, 8 GB; main laptop - MacBook Pro 13 ″, 512, 16 GB.

I have turned off almost all push notifications, except for incoming calls and messages from the VIP list. The VIP list is my parents, close people and all colleagues, from the commercial director to the office manager. But the habit of regularly peeking into my mailbox has been formed steadily.

I try not to waste time on all sorts of nonsense and take my day as much as possible from the moment I woke up. I have a Calendar application for all occasions. It is synchronized with all devices and is the easiest time management and day planning tool for me.

The Notes application is like a notebook for me, in which I constantly enter notes and ideas, or use it as a draft for writing various documents.

Must-have applications:

• mail,
• Viber,
• calendar,
• ,
• Facebook,
• Bookmate,
• mobile bank.

"Calendar", "Mail" and "Notes" are standard iOS and Mac OS applications.

To a lesser extent, sports trackers (RunKeeper for running, Workout Timer for CrossFit and Freeletics). I also use apps for reading news and buying air tickets from time to time.

Is there a place for paper in your work?

The specificity of our sphere is such that few people here already use notebooks. Apart from contracts, we rarely have anything on paper.

But often I take short notes on paper, draw while explaining something to colleagues. I also often use a piece of paper to lay out sequential tasks for the day.

What's in your bag?

The contents of my daily bag are unlikely to surprise anyone with the variety. Keys, documents, eye drops and sometimes lens containers, a mini-wallet with a pass, bank cards and small cash. Often all this can be simply put into pockets, which I sometimes do.

The contents of a travel bag depend on where I am going, for what purpose and for how long. But a few years ago I made myself a duty list of what to take and what to do before leaving, and I always follow it.

How do you organize your time?

As I said, I am taking my day as much as possible from the moment I woke up. But I devote the first hour exclusively to myself, to be included in life. I water the flowers, feed the cat, then I drink a glass of water with vitamins and go in for sports, and only then I take a shower and have breakfast.

On the way to the office, I make my first calls - for work and for my family. I try to organize external meetings at the beginning or at the end of the day, so as not to break the schedule.

Every day is unique, and I can't say that everything goes the same for me. There are events that break your day, when someone pulls you out of the workflow with a shout: "Help, everything is gone, let's go save the world!" Here it is important to quickly assess the criticality of the situation and understand whether everything is really lost and whether you need to run to save the world yourself.

How do you feel about delegation of authority?

If you want to do something well, do it yourself. But, when there is a lot of good to be done, it is necessary to delegate. From this point on, you need not only to tell and control, but also to teach, to invest your emotional approach to the delegated tasks.

What is your daily routine?

My regime can be called swinging. Today I can go to bed at ten in the evening, and tomorrow at five in the morning. At the same time, I rarely set myself an alarm: I'm used to waking up myself at the right time. It is important for me not only to get enough sleep, but also how I wake up. An alarm clock wakes you out of sleep and can do a disservice.

I am happy when all goals are achieved.

My productivity depends on my general condition and mood. But I consider myself a person who manages to do a lot in short periods of time.

My day often ends up looking at my mail and reading the news.

How do you while away the time in traffic jams?

For me, traffic jams are critical only if I am very late. In this case, I often change to public transport. Otherwise, traffic jams for me are the time when you are alone in the car, no one bothers you and you can do a lot of important things over the phone.

What's your hobby?

I enjoy discovering new places. Apparently, that's why I love to travel so much. Over the past ten years, it seems to me, I have traveled half the world. The second part is ahead.

I dream of a big house in Barcelona.

What place does sport take in your life?

Not a day without sports - that's about me! With my friend and colleague, I do jogging and one of the varieties of crossfit. I ride my bike. A couple of times I drove it to the office and to meetings.

I often alternate my studies. Outdoor sports during the summer season. In the winter - a gym.

I also study at home. Ten minutes of sports in the morning is as mandatory a program as brushing your teeth. Moreover, these ten minutes are not just morning exercises, but a good intense workout.

Life hacking from Viktor Chekanov

Some of my life and professional principles can be attributed to life hacking:

• I don't waste time arguing on hopeless topics. The hopeless are religion, politics, parenting. In such disputes, the truth is unlikely to be born.
• I realized early enough that my parents' advice was the most valuable to me. Even more valuable is that if I do my own thing, they always support me.
• If someone is mistaken, I will not tell him: “Do you remember, I told you?”. Will teach help, but not reproaches.
• When the majority around you shout "Help, everything is gone!", I will take it for mass hysteria and figure out if something really bad happened.
• There are three types of attitudes toward life change. They can be feared, you can adapt to them with varying degrees of success, and change can be created. The third option is closer to me. The second one works too.
• If they say to me: “This does not happen, because no one has tried it,” - for me it may become another challenge.
• The best selfie lighting is in the Abercrombie & Fitch fitting rooms.:)

Books

It is most interesting to read autobiographies - this is either the life experience of the author, or a look at history with a lively gaze, not an encyclopedic one. I was interested in the memoirs of Prince Yusupov ("Prince Felix Yusupov. Memoirs"). In his autobiography, you can get acquainted with historical events from the point of view of the person who created them.

A few more autobiographical books:

• Henry Ford "My Life, My Achievements";
• Salvador Dali "The Diary of a Genius";
• Vladimir Pozner "Farewell to Illusions";
• Winston Churchill “Never give up! Churchill's Best Speeches”.

TED lectures

TED is ideal for practicing English. I often watch lectures not only on business topics, but also on natural sciences. List of the last lectures I have watched:

• - Michelle Ryan;
• - Linda Hill;
• - Larry Smith;
• - Lauren Constantini;
• - Joe Incandela;
• - Meenakshi Narain.

I also strongly advise you to pay attention to the adaptation of the TED lectures on "Dozhd". Try to see at least one - you won't regret it.

Films

At one time, I attended a film club, where there were interesting lectures on cinematography with a screening of rare retro films and the very first masterpieces of cinema. Then I became interested not only in feature films, but also in experimental ones.

I watch a lot of mainstream cinema. But the films that left a deep mark on me include the films "" by David Wark Griffith (1916), "" by Dzig Vertov (1929) and "" by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali (1929). These films must be seen at least once in a lifetime.

I also like "" Karl Dreyer (1928) and "" Lars von Trier (2003). Such films are rarely revisited, but they are remembered forever.

In addition to a large number of professional blogs and sites, I like to read the feed, Meduza and a slightly specific news aggregator.

What is your life credo?

There is a wonderful expression in English that describes my life principle well. It sounds like this: “I dare for more” (“I have the courage to do more”).

Therefore, spare no effort or energy to realize your potential. Read good books, interact with smart people, and please be curious. I have not yet seen a single person who tried, acted, and he failed to achieve what he wanted. Everything works out only for those who do.