"He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not devise or undertake anything, but he will hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place. He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful."
— Prince Andrew Bolkónski's reflections on Kutúzov. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book 10, Ch. XVI. Translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude.
What Tolstoy showed in Kutuzov
In War and Peace, Kutuzov works like this: the commander in chief stays out of most operational questions, but on a few, he suddenly gives full attention. He can sit through a critical report on the army's position as if it were a chanted prayer service, and then make the only instruction of the whole report about looting among the troops.
You can see this type of leader in modern practice too: someone who rarely speaks up on specifics but sometimes puts full attention on one particular matter, with such force that the rest of the team has no idea why. Tolstoy's Kutuzov is one of the earliest and most detailed portraits of this type. Let's break it down.
Why a leader rarely steps in
Most questions coming to such a leader during a working week — from team members, contractors, or neighboring teams — will get handled in one of several workable ways. And most of the time that's fine: many paths work, and picking between them is up to the person doing the work.
"The color of the button on the landing page doesn't matter to me. Both options work. Let the designer decide."
Sometimes they're wrong, and the leader can see it. But arguing isn't worth it: the effort to convince them is more than the fix is worth.
"The developer wants to rewrite the module from scratch when patching the existing one would do. It'll take longer this way. But convincing him will take even longer, and the difference in outcome is small. Let him go his own way."
Sometimes it's useful to let the person stumble on his own, and not step in. A mistake in a safe situation lowers the chance he'll make it again where the cost is higher. Damage is limited, and it's cheaper to let him trip than to argue.
"A project manager wants to add steps to the task tracker flow — not because of any real need, but because the process 'looks more organized.' I warn him: if the team doesn't see a practical benefit, they won't actually engage with the extra steps. He's confident he's right. I let him try. One sprint in, the team is quietly bypassing the new steps, and he rolls the change back himself. Next time he leads with the practical question first: does this make the team's life easier?"
Sometimes it's already clear the consequences will hurt, but convincing him is more costly than the consequences themselves.
"A neighboring team is about to ship a release without load testing. It'll fall over in the first 24 hours, and support will get buried. But getting them to stop means a political fight with their manager — and that costs more, over time, than cleaning up the mess when it lands."
The 5% where stepping in is essential
What's left are cases you can't skip. One of a leader's key skills is catching these in time — knowing when to step in, and how far.
Tolstoy's sharpest example is the council at Fili. Most of the generals — Bennigsen, Ermólov, Dokhtúrov, Raévski — want to give battle for Moscow. Kutuzov hears them all out, then rises:
"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken crockery. Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with me. But I, by the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country, order a retreat."
— War and Peace, Book 11, Ch. IV, trans. Maude.
Alone that night, he sits at the table and keeps asking himself: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable? When was that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame for it?" Near the end of the novel, Tolstoy sums it up in one line: "He alone said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia."
That's what 5%-intervention looks like up close: one person against the majority, against the political cost, against the weight of the decision itself. But here you can't back off — what's at stake is not the leader's standing but the success of the whole effort.
"On the project we agreed at the start: business logic lives on the backend. The team occasionally tries to slip a piece of logic into the frontend. Miss one precedent, and in a month the same logic is in three more places; in three months you can't roll it back. Here you have to put in enough force to keep the project from getting infected: I block the first case and do a review with the whole team."
And there's an unavoidable side effect. For people who don't see the full picture, this focused attention often looks strange, in two different ways. Sometimes the question seems minor to them, and they don't get why the leader is putting so much attention on it. Sometimes the answer seems obvious to them, and they don't get why the leader is going against the majority.
The other side — keeping the team in context
That strangeness is where my own addition starts — something that isn't in Tolstoy's Kutuzov. Kutuzov in the novel doesn't worry about keeping the team informed: secrecy, different goals, and the sheer size and variety of the army make that impossible. For a modern manager, this piece usually turns out to be useful.
When a leader's move looks strange or too detailed to the team, that's not their problem — it's a signal. They don't understand what's being done and why. They don't know the project's goals, the ways of reaching them, their own role in the tasks.
So each time I catch my actions looking strange to the team, I check something like this: do they know the goal of this piece of work? Do they see the link between their tasks and that goal? Do they understand why this specific chunk matters right now rather than another one?
If the answer to any of those is no, the move looks arbitrary, even when the leader is right. What needs fixing is not the action but how well the team holds the overall picture.
There are also Kutuzov-like situations — when keeping the team fully in context just isn't possible. In those moments the leader's actions will look inconsistent and strange whether he likes it or not. All that's left is to honestly understand how those actions look from outside.
And there's a mirror effect. When you see strange, unexplainable actions from your own leadership or from a neighboring team whose decisions are outside your control, remember: you're in the same spot sometimes with your own team. They probably have their own 5% that you aren't seeing.
What is Kutuzov's management method
Boiled down, Kutuzov's method in Tolstoy is a discipline of selective attention:
By default, don't step in. In most operational questions, the people doing the work will handle them their own way. This isn't laziness or checking out — it's a deliberate choice. Your attention is a limited resource; spend it on 95% of the stream and there's nothing left when you really need it.
Catch the 5% of cases where stepping in is critical, and commit fully. No balancing, no half-measures. Put all your attention on those. These are the cases a leader exists for.
A modern addition that isn't in Tolstoy's Kutuzov: keep the team in context. Without the bigger picture, selective attention looks arbitrary from outside. The method doesn't stop working — but you need to understand the costs.
P.S.
Off topic from the article's argument, but worth saying: what I personally like about Kutuzov in the novel is that even in the harshest circumstances — retreat from Moscow, the burning capital, the winter pursuit of a starving enemy — he stays humane.
After Krasnoye, with thousands of ragged French prisoners along the road, Kutuzov speaks to his troops:
"It is hard for you, but still you are at home while they — you see what they have come to. Worse off than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn't spare ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too. Isn't it so, lads?"
— War and Peace, Book 15, Ch. VI, trans. Maude.
Originally published: Kutuzov's Management Method — Alex Rezvov's Blog
