Lessons in Yankee-Style Management : Soviets: 2 Californians are recruiting retired managers to teach entrepreneurship in the land of Lenin.

With the hope of getting lethargic Soviet industry moving to meet rising consumer demand, two Los Angeles businessmen are recruiting retired American executives, engineers and marketing specialists to work as advisers to Soviet enterprises.

Harold Willens, retired chairman of Wilshop Corp. and Factory Equipment Corp., said the International Executive Service Corps will soon send its volunteers to work with perhaps 10 Soviet firms, teaching the management skills needed as the country’s economy shifts to market socialism under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms.

“Entrepreneurship is almost unknown in the Soviet Union, but it is what is needed even more than new investment to get this economy going,” Willens said during a recent visit. “With entrepreneurship and modern management skills, Soviet enterprises can begin to deliver--today--the consumer goods that the people are waiting for.

“Without those skills, I think it will be difficult for the reforms to succeed economically and politically. People expect perestroika to improve their lives and raise their living standards, and they are impatient for results. We can help put things in the shops and ensure that perestroika succeeds.”

With Wesley Bilson, president of Delano Medical Management Corp. of Pacific Palisades, Willens has already assisted a new cooperative in Leningrad to get started making children’s clothes and a state-owned women’s lingerie factory in Moscow to improve its product line.

“Techniques such as business plans, test marketing and focus groups to get consumer reaction are really needed,” Bilson said, “if the Soviet economy is going to switch over from a system run from the top down on the basis of bureaucrats’ orders to one based on the market, on supplying goods that people really want to buy and not just things they will make do with because nothing else is available.

“The theories are still being worked out at the top for this market socialism, but we already know that many of the management skills of a successful entrepreneur in America will be needed to make it work.”

At the urging of Willens and Bilson, the International Executive Service Corps in Stamford, Conn., will expand its experimental effort, sending retired American managers and specialists later this year to advise Soviet factories manufacturing a wide range of consumer goods.

“This is not just a matter of technical advice and a bit of management know-how,” Willens said. “What we are advocating is freeing Soviet managers to be entrepreneurs, to take calculated risks so their businesses will grow. The demand is already there, and it is huge, for all types of consumer goods, but quality counts.”

Willens, a longtime advocate of better Soviet-American relations and a peace activist, said he had already received more than 4,000 letters, mostly proposing projects similar to those he had already undertaken after they were featured in the Soviet news media. These proposals, along with others from the government, would now be matched with 12,000 retired executives that the International Executive Service Corps can call upon, he said, and the first assignments would be made next month.

The corps, formed more than 25 years ago, sends retired American managers and specialists as business advisers to more than 90 countries, including Hungary and Poland in Eastern Europe.

Willens sees the organization starting with as many as 10 projects but probably expanding to scores of others if the first volunteers are able to assist the Soviet managers as he hopes.

“Of course, the Soviet system differs from what we have in the West, both in concept and in practice,” Willens said. “This will make for some tough assignments. But this is the point of what we are trying to do--bring proven management, marketing and manufacturing methods to help transform this economy.

“The American executives should have the blend of entrepreneurial imagination and specialist experience that will help Soviet managers break free and take advantage of the new opportunities that are opening up with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.”

Although Willens and Bilson are emphasizing management advice and technical assistance in helping modernize light industry here, they have also established a foundation in the United States that is raising capital to enable firms, such as the Garant cooperative making children’s clothes in Leningrad, to import modern equipment from the West.

“We made a rule--no investment, just free advice,” Willens explained. “But we broke the rule to raise $200,000 for this co-op to buy the most modern equipment available in the West in order to demonstrate what sort of quality and what sort of productivity an enterprise can get with a relatively modest amount of money.”

The Cheremushki Sewing Co. in Moscow, on the other hand, does not need new equipment, Bilson added, but freedom from the central bureaucracy, which even decides how many seams should be sewn in each brassiere it produced.

“In a centrally planned, command economy like that in the Soviet Union, there is no trust in the managers on the scene--that’s why there are so many regulations,” Willens said. “One of the important things we have tried to do, working like consultants to these two enterprises, is help the managers develop their skills to the point where the ministry will trust them and drop those rules that prevent them from making what the customers want.”

Encouraged by Willens’ and Bilson’s efforts with Garant and Cheremushki, the Soviet Ministry of Light Industry is anxious for further advice from retired American managers. A huge conglomerate of 460 major factories that supply most of the country’s consumer goods, the ministry is under heavy pressure to meet consumer demand--and demonstrate to the nation that perestroika is bringing change.

“Going from a command economy to market socialism will be a long journey for the Soviet Union, and it will have to be done in a series of steps,” Willens said, “but we may be able to show people here a couple of shortcuts.”