“Tomsk’s culture is guarded by the griffins —
their gaze is keen and every talon sharp —
on white wings, with photons turned to gold —
they scorch all evil spirits like a pyre.”
Yuri Ilyin
In a pre-New Year blog post, one is usually tempted to sum up the results: list achievements, victories, rankings. We have had all of that this outgoing year – and not a little. But today it is more important to speak about something else. About what unites our university as a CO-MMUNITY and allows us, in a changing world, to remain resilient and at the same time not lose our inner freedom. The coming New Year is a good occasion for such a conversation. But first, a bit of mythology – something permissible on the eve of a holiday.
The Griffins of Tomsk: a sign we do not immediately read
There is an architectural detail in Tomsk that many have seen, but not everyone has noticed: the griffins. They sit high up on facades, spires, pediments. The most famous are on the building of the former Merchant Vtorov Passage, built at the beginning of the 20th century, and on the spire of an old wooden house on Tverskaya Street. They silently watch the city from above, not interfering, but remaining present. They do not demand attention. They simply exist as a reminder that the city, just like the university, has deeper layers of meaning than those lying on the surface.
The very image of the griffin – a creature with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle – is inherently paradoxical. The lion is a symbol of earthly strength, stability, responsibility, the “king of the earth.” The eagle is a symbol of height, long sight, meaning, and a drive beyond the horizon. The combination of these principles in one figure conveys a very precise and profound idea: true stability is impossible without height of vision, and a high flight is impossible without a point of support for takeoff. In many cultures the griffin appears not simply as a mythical animal, but as a guardian. It protects treasures and borders. In the Slavic tradition, griffins are keepers of knowledge and of the paths leading to it, admitting people to what is sacred not by their status, but by their responsibility and desire to know the truth.
It seems no coincidence that griffins appeared in Tomsk’s urban architecture precisely in the period when the city with its recently built, first Imperial University in Siberia was rapidly developing and becoming more complex, searching for its place between Europe and Asia, the capital and the provinces, tradition and modernity. It was a symbol not of peace and quiet, but of the strength needed to hold together something complex and of responsibility for doing so. The griffins have outlived changes of eras, styles, ideologies, governance fashions. They have always remained “above” not because they were out of reach, but because they preserved a distance of view.
This year we did not just talk about corporate culture, we tried to see it. At one of our recent strategy sessions, we were searching for visual images of the university – its past, present, and future. Various metaphors emerged: a “well” from which we draw knowledge; a “lighthouse”; an “icebreaker”; a “city”; and even fantastic creatures such as centaurs. And at some point, almost intuitively, as if by itself, a griffin appeared on the flipchart. This coincidence genuinely caught my attention.
Because a classical university by its nature is very similar to a “griffin.” It, too, guards knowledge, but not as a warehouse or museum of untouchable artifacts. It is a living space in which knowledge constantly circulates, is passed on, and reinterpreted. The university, like the griffin, also stands “on the border”: between past and future, discipline and freedom, social demand and the need to develop fundamental science. It lives in a constant tension between different logics – stability and renewal, strategy and sensitivity to opportunities, the autonomy of units and the overall connectedness of the university. Such liminality and tension require a special form of resilience, a sophisticated organization, and a certain way of thinking. One can view this complexity as a problem. Or one can view it as a value. We choose the latter.
The university as a city
At that same strategy session another important metaphor for the university emerged – the city. It has districts with their own way of life: natural sciences, the humanities, engineering and technology, management, and many other “quarters” with different methods, styles of thinking, work tempos, and even different ideas of what “success” is. And this is normal. The autonomy of districts is not the city’s weakness, but a condition of its life and development.
But a city falls apart if it has no squares. A square is a place people come to not because they “have to,” but because important conversations, exchanges of opinions and ideas, and arguments take place there; cooperation arises; common tasks are built. For the university this means something very simple: we need places and formats where different disciplines, schools, and generations can meet, “cross-pollinate,” and gather into new teams. Not in a “voluntarily-compulsory” mode, but by interest. That is why we pay so much attention to interdisciplinary spaces, fab labs, and co-working areas – including the ones at 49 Lenin Avenue. By the way, the new building now under construction is definitely not a story about walls. It is about new types of technological and entrepreneurial activity, and about a culture of encounters.
A “culture of possibilities” and a “clean-sheet strategy”
This year we have spoken a great deal about the university’s corporate culture. One of the reasons for this discussion was, among other things, Mark Rozin’s book Ascending the Spiral, which describes what is called a culture of possibilities. And it is not so much about values and atmosphere (although it is about that as well) as about specific managerial and behavioral principles. They can be summarized in five key points.
First principle: to treat uncertainty not as the result of bad management, but as the normal state of the environment. If strategic culture always seeks to smooth out uncertainty, a culture of possibilities teaches us to live inside it without falling apart.
Second principle: to focus not only on “strong signals” (confirmed trends, existing markets, clear KPIs), but also on “weak signals” (strange ideas, marginal topics, not yet fully confirmed studies, initiatives without guarantees) that have not yet become priorities, but are already reshaping the landscape of the future.
Third principle: to view responsibility not only in terms of hierarchy, but also as management distributed across different periods of time and between different people. Here the role of a leader is not to “control everything,” but to create a frame in which others can take on risk and responsibility.
Fourth principle: to understand that there are areas of activity in which people cannot be quickly replaced. The university is precisely such an area, radically different from a corporation. Doctors of science, scientific schools, and unique competencies do not scale suddenly and by templates. Therefore, a university is a priori closer to a culture of possibilities than any other organizational structure. A culture of possibilities cannot exist without trust in people’s professionalism, in their ability to assume responsibility, in the fact that not everything of value can be immediately measured. In a university, trust is an especially precious resource. Because we work with people and scientific schools that are prepared and formed over decades. And if we begin to treat them as easily replaceable elements, we undermine the very foundation of the university environment.
And finally, the fifth principle: to build a “clean-sheet strategy.” The essence of such a strategy lies in the ability not only to follow a pre-written plan, but also to constantly read contexts, see emerging opportunities in the environment, and act in reliance on them. This is not a rejection of strategy as such, but rather a reminder of the necessary balance. Strategies are, of course, needed: they set the frame and allow us to allocate resources and responsibility. But it is no less important to avoid stifling the future with excessive control over the present, because today’s “non-obvious” research may, years from now, become the basis for breakthrough developments.
A university is not a project with an end date. It is a living system that is constantly in the process of becoming. And perhaps the greatest mistake would be to try to describe its development as a straight line: from point A to point B. It is more like movement along a complex trajectory with its own climbs, forks, returns, unexpected accelerations, and pauses. That is why the metaphor of the spiral and the culture of possibilities are so close to me. They dispel the illusion of total control, but they do not remove responsibility. They allow us to be thoughtful without becoming rigid. They grant a right to diversity without turning it into chaos.
Diversity as strength
We are often compared with more “homogeneous” universities – sectoral, technical, “sharpened” around a single dominant profile. But a classical university is arranged differently. Its resilience lies in diversity. In the fact that different styles of thinking, different tempos, and different trajectories coexist side by side. And this is not romanticism. It is evolutionary logic. Systems survive and develop when they have variability. When there are both leaders and quiet researchers, both innovators and keepers of tradition. It is important for the university to maintain this balance, without trying to align everyone to a single scale.
On leadership
In familiar strategic logic, a leader is the one who sets goals, allocates resources, controls implementation, and is responsible for the result. This is an important and necessary role. But in a culture of possibilities it is not sufficient. Here, a leader is, above all, someone who sees forks in the road earlier than others; who can recognize opportunities that have not yet become “drivers”; who connects things that do not yet connect on their own; who holds the frame without suppressing initiative. Put simply, in a culture of possibilities a leader is a navigator, not a dispatcher. They do not lead everyone along a single trajectory, but help different trajectories avoid collisions and, where needed, intersect. They know how to connect differences not into a purely competitive dynamic, but into a mutually beneficial, win-win logic. They are able to see in the other not a threat, but a resource. A leader is not always the loudest and fastest person. Often, quite the opposite: it is someone who knows how to see, to listen calmly, to translate from one language into another, and to intervene at the right moment.
On openness
One of the typical university traps is intellectual closedness. And we have not yet overcome it. We know how to ask strong and deep questions, but we do not always bring them into the public space. We prefer to discuss them not in large halls, but “among our own” in the corridors of conferences. A culture of possibilities demands greater trust in the outside world – in partnerships, dialogues, unexpected collaborations. And this is not about losing identity. It is about expanding the field of possibilities.
Here the role of a leader is especially important. A leader sets the tone: whether it is acceptable to go beyond one’s own “district,” whether it is safe to try something new. If a leader himself or herself lives in a logic of openness, the university gradually begins to breathe more freely.
And again – the griffin
If we return to our initial metaphor, it becomes clear why the griffin is not only a symbol of balance, but also a symbol of leadership. The griffin does not run along the ground and does not constantly soar in the sky. It chooses its moment. It looks from above, but acts on the ground. It unites height and strength in a single movement. Such should a leader be in a culture of possibilities: to see further and act precisely, to hold the frame and not fear complexity, to grant freedom and not leave others to drift entirely at the mercy of the current.
And if we allow ourselves a New Year’s metaphor: a university, like a griffin, must have both strong claws of responsibility and powerful wings of a gaze directed to the future. Tomsk’s griffins are almost always above eye level. To see them, you have to lift your head. Let this be our New Year’s gesture in search of a new angle of view.
At the end of the year, I want to say: we have not lived it perfectly, but we have lived it thoughtfully. Once again we have been convinced that our complexity is not a “bug in the program,” our diversity is not a weakness, and our sensitivity to possibilities is not chaos, but a form of university maturity.
And now I will ask three questions – to myself and to you:
— What have we seen this year that we had not noticed before?
— Where did we step beyond the boundaries of “our own district” and encounter the Other?
— What “bridge” will we build in the coming year – between people, ideas, disciplines, the city?
I am sure that the overwhelming majority of our university community has substantive answers to all these questions. And in the New Year, may each of us find our own trajectory in our university “city.” May new stitches, new bridges, new growth points appear. And may there be, above all this, something that unites us more strongly than any regulations: sincere curiosity, respect for knowledge, and a willingness to work with the future without reducing it to simple schemes.
Happy New Year, dear colleagues and friends! And now – forward. Under the wing of the griffin.
Sincerely Yours, Eduard Galazhinskiy