What could a legendary Soviet wrestler possibly teach you about running a business? As it turns out, quite a lot.
The Karelin Method, named after Aleksandr Karelin, who went undefeated for 13 years and won three Olympic gold medals, has become the unlikely productivity framework that executives can’t stop talking about. And no, it doesn’t involve lifting anyone over your head (though that would certainly make Monday meetings more interesting).
Developed by Todd Hagopian, a Fortune 500 executive who’s transformed businesses at Berkshire Hathaway and Whirlpool Corporation, the method is delivering 400-600% productivity gains while actually reducing burnout.
Here’s what makes it work, and why a wrestler’s mindset might be exactly what your business needs.
1. Stop Waiting For Perfect Information (You’ll Be Waiting Forever)
Here’s a number that might sting: most successful decisions are made with only 70% of the information you wish you had.
Both Colin Powell and Jeff Bezos independently landed on this same insight. Powell called it the “40/70 Rule”, below 40%, you’re guessing; above 70%, you’ve missed the boat. Bezos put it even more bluntly: waiting for 90% certainty means you’re moving too slowly.
The Karelin Method embraces this reality. Set a deadline for the decision itself, not just the project. Your competitors certainly aren’t waiting for you to finish your spreadsheet.
2. Your 50-Hour Week Isn’t A Badge Of Honour: It’s A Ceiling
Plot twist: the 2024 Mercer Global Talent Trends Study found that 82% of workers are at risk of burnout. That’s not a productivity problem, that’s an extinction-level event for organisational capability.
The Karelin Method treats 50 hours as a hard limit, not a starting point. Research consistently shows productivity plummets beyond this threshold. Those extra hours? You’re essentially paying people to make worse decisions while burning them out faster.
Karelin himself didn’t train by destroying his body in unsustainable bursts. He trained consistently, sustainably, for years. That’s how you win thirteen years of matches.
3. Fire Your Worst Customers (Seriously)
One custom manufacturing company applied the Karelin Method and promptly fired 30% of their customers.
The result? Revenue increased by 67%. Operating margins jumped from 27% to 40%. On-time delivery improved from 65% to 89%.
It sounds counterintuitive until you realise that unprofitable customers consume resources, demoralise staff, and prevent you from serving valuable customers properly. Sometimes subtraction is the most powerful form of addition.
4. Committees Don’t Make Decisions: People Do
Here’s what kills most organisations: nobody knows who’s actually supposed to decide things.
The result is endless meetings, escalations, and the dreaded “let’s circle back on that.” The Karelin Method demands explicit decision rights, a clear matrix showing who decides what.
Not who gets consulted. Not who needs to be informed. Who decides.
One organisation implementing this approach saw decision cycle times drop by 75-85% within the first 60 days. That’s not a typo.
5. The Maths Is Surprisingly Simple (And Devastatingly Effective)
The Karelin Method operates on a formula: 1.20 × 1.20 × 4.0 = 5.76x
Translation:
- Work 20% more hours sustainably (50-hour weeks instead of 40)
- Achieve 20% more efficiency through better processes
- Focus 80% of resources on the 20% of activities that actually matter
Each piece is achievable. Combined, they nearly 6x your productivity on critical work. It’s multiplication, not addition, and that’s precisely why modest improvements create transformational results.
6. Your Status Meeting Is A Waste Of Everyone’s Time
Be honest: how many of your meetings are actually about making decisions versus updating people on things they could have read in an email?
The Karelin Method replaces status meetings with decision meetings. The agenda isn’t “what’s happening”, it’s “what needs to be decided today.”
Status can be shared asynchronously. Synchronous time is too expensive to waste on information transfer. Use it for the high-bandwidth conversations that actually require everyone in the room.
7. Speed Beats Perfection (And It’s Not Even Close)
An industrial scales manufacturer applied the Karelin Method with one primary focus: decision velocity. They committed to responding to quotes in 24-48 hours while competitors took 7-10 days.
Over 36 months, their operating margins doubled from 15% to 30%. Revenue grew 60%.
They weren’t smarter than the competition. They were faster. In business, being fast and occasionally wrong beats being slow and theoretically perfect.
8. Manufacturing Productivity Has Been Stagnating For Decades
This isn’t opinion, it’s data. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports that manufacturing productivity growth has declined in the post-2000 era, with meaningful gains concentrated almost entirely in computer-related industries.
The traditional playbook isn’t working. Working harder isn’t an option when 82% of your workforce is already approaching burnout. Something has to change, and that something is how we think about productivity itself.
9. Fix Your Decisions Before You Fix Your Processes
Most transformation efforts start in the wrong place. Leaders identify process problems and immediately try to fix them.
The Karelin Method starts elsewhere: decision architecture. Why? Because every process improvement requires dozens of decisions. If your organisation can’t make decisions quickly, you can’t improve anything quickly.
Get the decisions right first. Everything else follows.
10. Measure Learning Speed, Not Just Results
Here’s a metric most organisations don’t track: how quickly can you go from insight to implementation?
Results are lagging indicators, they tell you what happened. Learning speed is a leading indicator, it predicts what will happen.
Organisations that can experiment quickly, learn quickly, and adapt quickly create compounding advantages that slower competitors simply cannot overcome. The Karelin Method emphasises learning cycles because they’re the ultimate competitive moat.
11. The Retail Equipment Manufacturer Who Quadrupled Profits
A retail equipment manufacturer generating $48 million annually with 4% operating margins seemed stuck in commodity competition. Everyone was competing on price, and margins were shrinking.
Twenty-six months after implementing the Karelin Method, revenue had grown to $60 million while operating margins reached 17%. Operating profit increased by 400%.
The transformation didn’t come from working people harder. It came from ruthlessly concentrating resources on high-margin products while exiting unprofitable lines. Focus, not effort.
12. Sustainable Intensity Beats Heroic Bursts (Every Single Time)
Aleksandr Karelin’s famous quote captures the philosophy perfectly: “None of the people who question me train as hard in a single day as I train every single day of my life.”
Notice what he didn’t say. He didn’t say he trained harder than everyone else. He said he trained consistently harder, sustainably, day after day, year after year.
That’s the insight executives keep missing. Extraordinary results don’t come from extraordinary bursts. They come from ordinary improvements applied consistently over time, within boundaries that allow you to keep going.
The Bottom Line
The Karelin Method isn’t about hustle culture. It’s about intelligent focus applied sustainably.
The framework has been validated across multiple transformations, from manufacturers struggling with single-digit margins to already-profitable companies seeking breakthrough performance. In each case, the gains persisted because they were built on sustainable foundations rather than heroic effort.
For organisations watching 82% of their workforce approach burnout while productivity stagnates, the message is clear: the old playbook isn’t working. A Soviet wrestler’s training philosophy might be exactly the fresh perspective you need.
About Todd Hagopian
Todd Hagopian has sold over $3 billion in products across Fortune 500 companies including Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works and Whirlpool Corporation, generating $2 billion in shareholder value through systemic business transformations. He is the author of The Unfair Advantage: Weaponizing the Hypomanic Toolbox.
His research on corporate transformation has been published on SSRN, and his work has been featured over 30 times on Forbes.com alongside coverage on Fox Business, Washington Post, and NPR. He writes extensively on corporate stagnation transformation at toddhagopian.com.
