The First Three Chapters

The First Steps of a CEO

The corridor stretched out like a cracked seam in the body of an old house, lit by the dim, trembling glow of a few lonely bulbs. The floor was mottled with stains where dried mud and peeling paint fused into chaotic patterns, like maps of forgotten, abandoned lands. The walls, once a dull green, were now flaking, their layers curling and splitting, exposing the scars of a vanished age.

Only a crooked honor board broke this lifeless monotony. Half the letters in the inscription had faded, the rest long since crumbled. What remained were pale, rectangular patches, the ghostly outlines of portraits that had once gazed solemnly at passersby and now stared back at me like hollow windows into a lost world.

Strangely, it didn’t weigh me down. On the contrary, it pushed me forward. I quickened my pace, flung open the door to the plant’s administrative wing, the freshly renovated part of this crumbling building, and stepped into a new world, the one my country had thrust itself into seven years earlier.

It was late August 1999. Just a few months earlier, I had come back from Norway after six years of studying and working. After a brief stop in Moscow, I was once again in my native Novgorod, ready to take on the work I felt I had been preparing for all those years. By the age of thirty-seven, I felt ready to put the knowledge and experience I’d built up to use. It felt as though everything could change. And this corridor would be the first step forward.

The people I passed greeted me politely, but their eyes were guarded, reserved. No one smiled, as if the old saying still lingered in their minds: “Laughter without reason betrays a fool.” Only the secretary, a young woman with a recent degree in German, stood up from her desk and greeted me with a smile.

“Good morning, Alexander Vladimirovich. Welcome to NovKom! Would you like some tea?”

I flinched, not at the offer, but at the formality of “Alexander Vladimirovich.” It rang in my ears like an echo from another life. No one had called me that in years. I had grown unaccustomed to the patronymic, and now it was jarring, like a false note in a familiar melody.

A couple of years earlier, I had the good fortune to sit in on what was almost a private lecture in Oslo with no more than fifteen people in the room. It had been arranged for employees of Norsk Energo, where I was working at the time, as the company was trying to build ties with Russia. The speaker, a Norwegian expert on Russian culture, spoke to his fellow countrymen in Norwegian. As I later found out, I was the only Russian there, and he had no idea.

When you grow up and live your entire life in one country, much of it feels natural, almost invisible. You simply take it for granted and never stop to think about it. A fresh perspective from an outsider allows you to see things from a new angle. That’s exactly what this lecturer gave me. His talk made me look at my own culture in a new way, and some of his ideas I later put into practice.

What stayed with me most was a story about his visit to the Lenin Library. To copy just a couple of pages, he had to fill out a ridiculous form. The tiniest mistake sent him back to square one. He rewrote it three times before the young woman at the desk finally nodded in approval. But then she paused and, without batting an eye, announced that the book couldn’t be copied. He admitted that at that moment, he almost climbed over the counter to strangle her.

A man waiting in line pulled him aside and whispered:

“Don’t take it personally. Here you have to find a way to reach her. Learn her name, bring her a chocolate bar, and ask her nicely.”

He didn’t believe it but tried anyway. To his amazement, she copied even more pages than he asked for.

This, he realized, was the key to understanding Russia: two parallel worlds coexist. One is formal, on “Vy” (the polite or official “you”), with rules, procedures, and walls. The other is informal, on “Ty” (the familiar “you”), with trust, friendship, and open doors. The art of business, as he put it, lies in knowing how to move from the first world into the second.

It was like a lightning strike for me, and everything suddenly made sense. From then on, I tried to drop the patronymic and move to “Ty” as quickly as I could. The atmosphere changed right away, a sense of friendliness appeared, and trust followed.

But here, at NovKom, I’d have to forget all that and once again learn to endure the world of “Vy”.

Still, I smiled:

“Thank you, Sveta, no need. Please prepare the company’s financial results for the last few years. And one more thing: I want to meet personally with all the staff of the plant administration and with each of the foremen too. Please put those meetings in my schedule.”

The general director’s office greeted me with silence and a massive desk, the kind behind which you could imagine fates being decided. To the side stood a smaller table with four neatly arranged chairs for visitors. Everything in the room seemed designed to underline one message: this was the seat of power.

I walked to the “throne” and sat down. The back of the chair yielded softly, as if whispering: now you’re in charge. A classic symbol of authority, I thought with a wry smile. And right there I made a decision: when speaking with people, I would move to the smaller table. No towering above them. No barriers. A place where candor could take root. And maybe, despite the inevitable “Vy”, I could begin to nurture an atmosphere of trust and team spirit that exists only in the world of “Ty”.

The first half of the day passed in a blur of meetings, introductions, and first impressions of the people and the plant. When lunchtime came, I learned that the canteen was on a neighboring site, reached by a company bus. True to form, I wanted to walk instead. Walking had always been my way to clear my head, to think. The toughest problems, the ones I might wrestle with for days, usually unraveled themselves while I was walking, as if on their own. All I had to do was work out the details.

At NovKom, though, that habit died on the spot: the plant was set in an industrial zone with no sidewalks. Pedestrians clearly weren’t part of the plan. Even reaching the neighboring site on foot was impossible, so I had no choice but to climb onto the company bus.

The canteen greeted me with a heavy, lingering smell: sour cabbage soup, burnt oil, and dried-fruit compote. It was painfully familiar, like being pulled straight back into the past. In the six years I’d been away from Russia, factory canteens, it seemed, hadn’t changed a bit.

The set lunch looked like something out of a museum display: barley soup, sticky buckwheat with gravy of dubious origin, a cutlet that looked as though it had survived more than one shift, and the infamous compote, cloudy and lukewarm. I sat at a plastic table, listening to the hum of voices and the clatter of trays, when a wave of unease swept over me. Not because of the food itself, but because of what it symbolized.

Motivation theory speaks of hygiene factors. When they’re present, you barely notice them—like clean air or a smooth road under your feet. But once they’re gone, everything falters. Their absence rings like a bell. That day, I felt with piercing clarity how much these unseen details matter, and how their lack can wear you down from within.

No, I didn’t regret taking this job. But in that moment, the mountain of tasks ahead of me suddenly felt steeper and higher.

Alright then. I’d just add one more item to the list: decent meals. For myself, and for everyone else.

Trust on Trial

Nothing in Norway impressed me more than the level of trust people had in each other. In Russia in the 1990s, we lived by a simple rule. Leave something unattended and it was gone. A wallet, a bag, a bicycle—everything had to stay within reach. In Norway, it was the opposite. People lost wallets, keys, jewelry, and somehow they always came back, as if the things themselves knew the way home.

One case that struck me most happened one summer. Driving along a country road, we saw a sign: Jordbær – selvplukk (Strawberries—pick your own). At the farm there was no farmer and no vendor. Just a shed, baskets, scales, and… a basin full of money. On the wall hung instructions: pick, weigh, and pay. All on trust. In that basin lay more than 1,500 kroner, about two hundred dollars, and not a soul in sight.

That basin in a strawberry field didn’t just astonish me; it made me think like an economist. Trust isn’t about naivety. It’s about efficiency. When people trust each other, there is no need for guards, inspectors, or signatories. The unproductive costs vanish. Everything moves faster, simpler, and works better.

That was the atmosphere I dreamed of building at NovKom. No hiding behind formalities, but working as one team, tackling real problems together. That was the true purpose behind every personal conversation with my employees. I was opening up in the hope of sparking a response. Of course, I also needed to understand what was really happening and get involved in solving urgent problems. But above all, I wanted to set in motion what I had once seen in a Norwegian field: a circle of trust that worked with striking efficiency.

Conversations with the staff flowed easily. Some shared worries, others came up with unexpected ideas, and slowly a picture emerged, far clearer than any official report.

It turned out that a construction company was already working on the site. We asked them for a quote to renovate the corridor, and a week later the smell of fresh paint was already in the air. I wanted the corridor to be bright and simple: white walls, nothing extra. Over time, large photographs of our products, attachments for combines and other agricultural machinery, were to appear there—striking images that would say more about us than any slogan. The idea was that everyone who walked in, whether client or worker, would feel that something meaningful was being created here—something to be proud of.

In the administration kitchen we added a microwave. Nothing fancy, but somehow lunches became warmer, more alive. For the workers, we reviewed proposals for hot meals and prepared arguments for an upcoming talk with my manager, Hans from Germany. At that time, NovKom was a subsidiary of a German family-owned company.

But the biggest change was the launch of a new piece-rate pay system. Even before I arrived, an Excel file had been drawn up in Germany with all the formulas. Each team had a weekly quota, and anything above it turned into a bonus. On paper it made perfect sense: if you wanted to earn more, you worked harder. The company got part of the extra output, the workers got the rest. A textbook win-win. I studied the overall logic of the system and the details of the Excel model. In personal talks with the foremen, I made sure each one understood and accepted the rules. Officially, they did. They nodded and even called it fair.

A month later, reality set in. The workers had their own system. Week one, they held back, carefully stopping just short of the quota, as if building a cushion. Week two, they suddenly pushed ahead, overshooting the plan by 150–200 percent, raking in the bonus. Week three, they eased off again. By the end of the month, output was the same as before, the effort was the same, but the wages were higher. The pie was unchanged; only the workers now took the bigger slice. Exactly the opposite of what the system had been meant to achieve.

I was frustrated: the trust I was trying to build had taken a hit. And yet I couldn’t help but admire them. The workers had spotted the weak point right away and bent the rules to their advantage with raw, street-smart ingenuity. It was clear that building trust would be anything but simple, and the pay system would need serious rework to close those loopholes. That was exactly what I wanted to discuss with my manager, whose visit we were expecting.

When the Emperor Has No Clothes

Hans climbed out of the car without a word. His eyes burned with such fury that it felt as if the slightest touch would make him explode. My “good morning,” along with a casual question about his trip, just hung in the air, chopped off by an abrupt “Later.”

We stepped into the building. I kept quiet on purpose, wanting it to be a surprise. My idea, my first brushstroke toward a new image for the company: freshly painted white walls and neat baseboards. The plan was to hang new lamps and photos of our products next.

“What the hell is this?!” Hans barked, freezing in the doorway.

“How much did it cost?”

I named the sum. Something twitched in his face, as if he’d been hit with a sudden toothache.

“All administration staff—outside. Now.”

A minute later we were standing in the yard, lined up in front of the main building. A strip of facade gleamed with fresh window frames, but the rest dragged us straight back into the past—peeling walls, dull panes through which daylight barely seeped, some patched up with plywood.

To the left loomed the production hall, linked to the offices by a narrow passage. Its giant windows, like the eyes of a tired colossus, were clouded with grime and in places boarded up with metal sheets. Behind the glass, the hulking shapes of presses and machines loomed in the dim light. From inside came a deep growl that now and then broke into screeches and metallic bangs, like hammers striking empty barrels.

To the right stretched warehouses and the paint shop, heavy with the stench of solvents and fresh enamel. Dark stains on the windows hinted at silhouettes of workers in coveralls and masks, spray guns in their hands.

Low clouds hung so heavy that they seemed to press down on us, while the wind crept under our jackets. It snatched up scraps of trash and drove them skittering along the walls.

Hans paced in front of us like an officer drilling his troops, speaking—no, lashing—in German, with sharp, cutting rage. I caught only fragments: the new system was a gift. The workers had cheated. The bonus was stolen. We, the managers, had failed. Implement. No changes. No excuses. Fast.

We stood in silence. Most didn’t understand a word, but it didn’t matter. The meaning was clear without translation.

The new pay system was his creation, his pride. And the way it had been outsmarted, he saw not as cleverness, but as an insult. A personal slap in the face. I knew that.

But knowing didn’t make it easier. Everything inside me churned, not as much from his words as from the way he delivered them. It swept away everything: self-respect, dignity, and the fragile fabric of trust I had worked so hard to weave.

My title, “General Director,” felt at that moment like letters scrawled on a cardboard crown. And the autumn wind whistling through the yard seemed to strip those letters away, like leaves torn from the trees.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Hans and I went into the office. Out of habit, I took a seat at the small table, the one I usually chose when I wanted to talk to people on equal terms. For some reason, I expected Hans to take the armchair, to mark his authority. Instead, he sat down right across from me.

“Let’s go back to the corridor,” he said flatly.

“You agreed it was necessary.”

“With the idea, yes. But we never talked about timing or how it would be done. Did you hold a tender? Did you check with your deputies? With me?”

Each word landed like a steady hammer blow against my skull. Not because he shouted. He didn’t. He spoke calmly and precisely. And I realized he was right. It wasn’t about the paint. I had failed at something much bigger—building the team.

“How are you any different from those petty thieves on the shop floor, the ones you even decided to feed with lunch?” Hans pressed on. “You also took company money and spent it. Only you did it clumsily and inefficiently.”

“Sorry… I thought those powers had been delegated to me…”

“Delegated?” He almost choked on the word.

I doubted “delegation” was even in his active vocabulary. But at that moment, I understood that trust isn’t written into a job description. It comes with time. It has to be earned. That’s how I approached it, so why did I expect anything else from others?

Inside, everything tightened as shame and a bitter sense of guilt rose in my throat. I had let down the people who had trusted me enough to put me in this role.

Hans stood up. His voice was dry, flat, like a verdict being read.

“From today on, I will call you every evening. And you’ll tell me what you did to fix this situation and what you plan to do tomorrow.”

As it turned out, by “evening” Hans meant not mine but his, the German one. With the two-hour time difference, I stayed in the office from seven in the evening, waiting for his call. He usually rang closer to eight, and with German meticulousness went through the details and handed out new instructions.

One of his constant demands was that I track down and fire the ringleaders behind the scheme the workers had devised. The very idea made me recoil, both at the approach itself and at the role he expected me to play.

To really understand what I felt then, you have to rewind to my youth, to the era of rotting socialism. From the podiums came one message, while in the kitchens people whispered a very different one. On television we were told about the decay of capitalism, while in real life everything Western was admired. The gap between words and deeds no longer shocked anyone; it had simply become the norm.

We boys, raised on the romance of books, went looking for something real, something genuine to hold on to. Many of us found it in what was then called “blatnoy.” Today the word has almost disappeared, along with the era it belonged to. But back then, it carried weight.

In the blatnoy world, criminal grit was oddly mixed with a kind of outlaw romance. A Soviet Robin Hood of sorts, outside the system and sometimes outside the law, but guided by an inner code that earned the respect of the kids on the block.

And one of the key rules of that world was simple: never betray your own.

Especially at school, our first point of contact with the system, where all that loud social activity felt fake, imposed from above. The hero was the one who kept silent, even under pressure—the one who never gave up his comrades.

But ratting out a friend meant you were done for. Branded. No football, no invitations, no greetings.

That code stayed with me, etched into me like a tattoo. Which is why Hans’s demand struck such a raw nerve. I felt more sympathy for the workers who stood by their own than condemnation, and I did everything I could to persuade Hans to drop the idea of reprisals and look for another way.

Despite my best efforts, it came to nothing. Hans remained unyielding. Worse still, I soon realized that my evening report was only part of his game. Before calling me, he had already spoken with my deputies, heard their side, and then compared our stories. And I had no doubt: in this little drama, I was not the witness—I was the suspect.

The office air grew heavier by the day. More and more often, I caught myself heading to work with a sinking sense of dread already settling in. Long twelve-hour days, no chance for my much-needed walks, and constant stress were taking a heavy toll on my mind and body.

The breaking point came with the second payroll under the new system. The first one had already shown strange discrepancies, but now the mistakes were obvious. I dove into the numbers, combed through the program, and found the flaw. I called the financial controller who had written it and explained the problem. He admitted it right away: yes, there was an error—but he had no idea how to fix it.

I laid the figures before Hans, the program’s faulty calculations confirmed by its own author, and my own, which were correct. Then I asked the obvious: could we pay according to the corrected data?

His answer was blunt:

“No. Pay as the program calculated.”

That was when the realization began to settle in. The company’s approach to management was worlds apart from everything I had studied and what I had come to believe during my years in Norway. Trust wasn’t just absent; it had never even been on the table. Workers weren’t partners—they were treated as adversaries to be controlled, restrained, and squeezed for all they were worth.

In Germany, the unions pushed back, and the system survived on a fragile balance of pressure and resistance. But in Russia, the unions had been swept away by the tide of change, and top-down diktat reached the point of absurdity.

Everything I had learned in Norway, everything I had sincerely believed in and embraced, didn’t just fail to work here—it got in the way. I found myself caught in the crossfire: duty to the company, the demands of my superiors, and my own convictions. I looked for a way out and found none.

Eventually, I realized there was only one exit—to walk away.

I handed my resignation to Hans in person, face to face. He showed no surprise. The corner of his mouth twitched. Whether it was quiet acceptance or relief that I had taken a burden off his hands, I couldn’t tell.

I turned and walked out.

The corridor met me in half-light. The ceiling lamps threw a weak, uneven glow. Everything felt frozen.

I had the odd sensation that someone was watching me.

Shadows showed through the walls, not cast by light but as though they were rising from within. Beneath the fresh paint, the outlines of the past bled through: flaking plaster, rust stains, the crooked honor board with pale, hollow sockets where photographs had once hung.

As if the walls remembered more than people.

As if they watched me go.

I didn’t look back.

But I felt it: I was leaving behind not only people, but also the man I had never become.