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© Mikhail Fedorov, 2026
ISBN 978-5-0069-6033-6
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
From the Author
This book grew out of a practical question: how do you make high-quality decisions under intense time pressure, with uncertainty and conflicting data?
Like many executives, especially those responsible for risk analysis and control, I was unsatisfied with abstract theories. I wanted to understand the mechanics of thinking in a moment of crisis. My guides became the works of Carl Spetzler1, Daniel Kahneman2, and other researchers who broke down the decision-making process into its components: from framing and seeking alternatives to accounting for cognitive biases. I even translated and published Carl Spetzler’s book “Decision Quality” in Russian and completed his author’s course “Strategic Decisions and Risk Management” at Stanford University (at the time).
But soon I encountered a limitation. These brilliant, rational tools, born from the logic of Western Protestant ethics, worked poorly in our reality. Not because our reality is somehow different. No, technically everything works more than effectively. But they prescribe analyzing the “human material” – fatigue, grievances, silent resistance, unspoken fears, that very “mysterious Russian soul” that breaks any, even the most perfect algorithms – from the perspective of those very decision-making criteria. And this clashes with something deep inside me.
So I turned to another source – classic Russian literature. To Dostoevsky, who delved into the motives behind actions. To Chekhov, who showed the drama in everyday life. It was this, it seems to me, that helped me look beyond management schemes, into that zone where a decision is born not in an Excel spreadsheet, but at the intersection of logic, intuition, duty, and guilt.
The genre of the “business novel” (following the model of Arthur Hailey3 or Eliyahu Goldratt4) became a convenient form for this idea. It allowed me to enact a complex management case in real-time, to show how theory collides with living practice, with personalities, with the context of a specific plant in a specific city.
One of the book’s central ideas is the scale of chaos. Imagine that all the situations in which we make decisions can be placed on a line between two extremes: absolute order (where everything is by the book) and absolute chaos (where there are no guidelines at all). Most of our lives, and especially the life of a manager, falls somewhere in between.
The main drama unfolds on the edge of chaos (following Rachya Arzumanyan5) – where the usual order has become too complex, old navigation methods fail, but it’s not yet complete lawlessness where you can abandon logic entirely. It’s here that adaptive strategies, flexibility, and a readiness to learn on the fly are needed. The book’s hero, Alexey Orlov, spends most of his journey moving along this edge, starting in rationality and order and arriving by the end of his story in a situation of complete chaos, both external and internal.
But what to do when the system does collapse and total, absolute chaos sets in? When the very “point of reference” is lost and there’s nothing to hold onto? In that case – and such moments exist in the book as well – the Russian literary tradition leaves one final, fundamental support. It’s shown through a personal, quiet turning to God. Let this not disturb atheists – see it as a tribute to our classics, whose entire metaphysics grew out of the Gospel. For everyone else, it’s an attempt to artistically depict a line of behavior when rational methods are exhausted, but action is still necessary.
Who might find this book useful? Honestly, I wrote it for myself, so the book might be interesting to people who are at least somewhat like me:
– Practicing managers and executives who will recognize familiar pains in this story and, perhaps, find useful algorithms for themselves in the hero’s tools. The use of management jargon and Anglicisms (moderately), deeply embedded in the fabric of modern Russian business, is intended for them.
– Students in management and economics programs who are tired of dry case studies and want to see how theories work (or don’t work) in “field” conditions, filled with the human factor.
– Anyone interested in how thinking works in complex situations and where the boundary lies between cold calculation and the necessity of making a decision based on something greater.
This is not a textbook or a collection of ready-made recipes. It’s a fictional exploration of what goes on in the head and soul of the person on whom everything depends. I hope it makes you think not only about the quality of decisions but also about their price.
One last thing. All coincidences with real persons and organizations are accidental; all stories and situations are fictional.
Mikhail FedorovSt. Petersburg, 2025Introduction
Uncle Misha’s shift was from ten to six. Eight hours of silence, the scratch of mice under the floorboards, and that steady hum that came from the night-shift plant. Not even from the workshops, but from somewhere underground, as if the very foundation was humming. He sat in his booth by the reserve gates, chain-smoking roll-ups. There was nothing much to guard – these gates were opened once a month, maybe less, for some oversized piece of equipment. But it was a good spot, with a view. The whole main building was right there, along with the path from the parking lot and a stretch leading to the checkpoint.
The plant had changed over his lifetime. Uncle Misha remembered when they built it – not these glass things where you couldn’t even see your own reflection now, but the first ones, the brick ones, post-war. He was just a kid back then, helping his father, a bricklayer. He remembered when they brought in the first machine tool from Chelyabinsk – traffic was blocked all day, people crowded around, watching it like it was a miracle. The plant was officially listed as “No. 234” back then. They were proud of it, yeah. Later it became “Progress,” sprouted additions, learned to make things that weren’t even in the original plans. And now.. Now for Uncle Misha, it was just a collection of lights in the night. The living soul was slowly draining out of it, like oil from an old bearing.
First to arrive, like clockwork, was Alexey Orlov. At five to six, you’d hear not the engine of his foreign car (quiet as it was), but the click of the door and then those steps – sharp, abrupt, like he was hammering nails into the floor. A nod to Uncle Misha – not superior, not even human, really. Just a ritual: “I’m here. System’s working”. Uncle Misha would nod back, barely perceptible. He remembered him differently. Young, passionate, with a fire in his eyes. Back then, he almost got into a fight with Bocharov, the old foreman – yelling about some kind of “optimization”. Bocharov, red as a lobster, yelled back: “Your optimization will chew people up and spit them out!” Turned out, they were both right. Bitter truth.
Next came Anna Sokolova. She walked without looking around, her gaze fixed on something internal, something of her own. A woman-function. Uncle Misha had heard she was raising a son on her own. Her stubbornness came not from ideas, but from exhaustion. From having no room to retreat.
Then Semyonov, Orlov’s friend, it seemed. He walked, glued to his phone, laughing unnaturally, that official kind of laugh. But his eyes were empty, tired. The eternal peacemaker. The eternal go-between for “must” and “can’t”.
And then the general movement would hit. People. Voices, the crunch of snow under boots, the smell of frost and cheap tobacco. Uncle Misha would peer into their faces. What did they care? For them, these walls were just a place to get paid. Not destiny. Not memory.
His whole destiny was right here. He married Katya, an assembler, met her right here. His son was born, went to the same plant – but couldn’t handle it, fell into drinking. Katya died; her funeral was in the plant’s clubhouse, packed with people. Now there was the booth, silence, and an icon in the corner, dark, covered in cobwebs. He’d cross himself in front of it automatically when his heart felt heavy with sorrow. To keep the connection from breaking with that world where they were all still alive.
The shift was in full swing when the electrician, Petka, poked his head into the booth, knocking boyishly on the doorframe.
“Uncle Misha! Hey! Got any tea?”
“Help yourself, it’s in the thermos. Just don’t burn yourself”.
Petka poured some into the cup lid, sipped it noisily, perched on a wobbly stool.
“Their lights have been on since five again. I can smell trouble. The supply guys were running around like cockroaches yesterday”.
Uncle Misha glanced silently at the office windows. Shrugged.
“The plant’s alive. In anything alive, something’s always straining, something’s always aching”.
“It aches for it, but we’re the ones groaning,” Petka snorted. “The plan, reworks.. But you, Uncle Misha, you’ve seen them all. This Orlov.. what’s he like? Will he hold up, if something happens?”
Uncle Misha took a long time lighting his dead cigarette. “Hold up”. That word, like you’re talking about a sack of cement.
“Back in the day, Petka,” his voice grew deeper, “the overhead crane in workshop nine would just.. stop. You didn’t ‘hold up’ against it. You fixed it. Together. Everyone would gather, each with whatever they could bring. Old-timers, youngsters. Took three days, at least. Because that crane – it was like a heart. It stops – everything stops. Not for some report. For the work”.
He took a drag, blew a stream of smoke into the sunbeam coming through the window.
“And now a crane is just a line item on a balance sheet. An asset. It breaks – they look for whose fault it was. How to write it off cheaper. They’ve forgotten, Petka. They’ve forgotten that behind each one of these.. assets.. there are people. People who could also pull together for three days. Or they could just hide in the smoking room and laugh: ‘Not my problem.’ Because to them – asset, liability – who gives a damn?”
Petka listened, having stopped fiddling with his cup.
“So, about Orlov”.
Uncle Misha grunted, stretching his back.
“It depends on one thing. Whether he feels the plant or not. If he feels it – that it’s made of people, not just iron and numbers – then maybe he’ll make it. But if not.. Then no matter what numbers he pulls up on his screen. The main thing doesn’t live between the numbers. It lives in the people. In that ‘togetherness.’ That’s not something they teach in offices. Only life can teach you that. Or maybe it won’t”.
Petka was quiet for a moment, then drained his cup.
“You’re overthinking it, Uncle Misha”.
“Nah, I’m not overthinking,” the old man waved him off. “Just old. Seen a lot”.
Petka rushed off to his own business. Uncle Misha was alone again. The sun was warming the windowpane. He looked at the main building. The light in Orlov’s office window glowed steadily, a steady, unblinking eye.
“Will you understand?” Uncle Misha thought, without malice, but with a kind of weary pity. “Or will you just keep feeding your reports?”
Down by the checkpoint, visitors were already gathering – in strict, uniform-like suits, with briefcases instead of folders. From the city, from headquarters. Smooth, preoccupied faces. They always showed up before a storm. Either an inspection, or just to fray everyone’s nerves.
Uncle Misha turned away and started gathering his things into his worn-out bag. His shift was ending.
The plant hummed, lived. What would happen there today was known only to those behind the glass. He, Uncle Misha, was already stepping aside, into his silent lot. He had stood his watch. Now it was their turn.
And how they would stand it – “together” or each man for himself – he’d see tomorrow morning. By the way they trudged through those gates. Or didn’t trudge, but walked with some new, incomprehensible anger.
PART I: THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL
Chapter 1: Algorithm Malfunction
Alexey Orlov loved the silence of his office exactly until seven in the morning. In that half-hour, between his arrival and the first meeting, the world was clear. Outside the window, by the old gates, the dim light in the guard booth went out – the night shift ending, the day shift not yet begun. A gap. His gap.
Left panel – actual workshop performance indicators. Central panel – KPI trends. Right panel – “pulse”: energy consumption, material flow. Green numbers, black background. This was his plant. Not by right of ownership, but by right of twenty years given to this place. He remembered in the nineties, stealing non-ferrous metal here and warming themselves by makeshift stoves, and in the two-thousands, implementing the first SCADA systems that the old foremen laughed at. Now it was a finely tuned mechanism. Almost.
“Progress” was the main project of his life. Every sensor here was the embodiment of his stubbornness, his sleepless nights. His creation. His only one, if he was honest.
“Optimization of flow No. 17 yielded a 0.8% gain,” he muttered to himself, looking at yesterday’s report. “But the load on the preceding operation increased by three percent. Damn”.
He reached for his cold coffee when a notification popped up on the central screen: “Product ‘Etalon.’ Order No. 4471. Deviation in supply of raw material ‘Block-K7’ from LLC ‘Tekhnolit.’ Risk of schedule disruption: 15%”.
“Tekhnolit”? Reliable as a Swiss watch. Alexey pulled up the record. Reason: “Untimely customs documentation”. Standard. No need to engage the brain – a well-worn algorithm: put pressure on procurement, they put pressure on the supplier, reshuffle the queue on the lines, use the safety stock. His hand automatically reached for the phone.
But his finger hovered over the receiver. His gaze fixed on the right monitor. “Warehouse stock level: 8.2 days”. Target was 7. Moscow had already sent warnings. Using the safety stock meant dropping the indicator again, more explanations. Another battle over a number in a report, not over the real work.
He leaned back in his chair. Leather, bought about five years ago, already worn on the back. The smell of dust, mixed with the smell of old plastic from the monitors, tickled his nose. The office was stuffy. Something was bothering him – not logic, but something under his ribs, vague and unpleasant. Like a mechanism had malfunctioned, but it wasn’t visible on the schematics.
There was a knock at the door, and without waiting for an answer, Anna Sokolova entered. Head of Production. In her hand – a tablet; on her face – not an expression of “more problems,” but her usual, ironed-flat fatigue.
“Alexey Sergeevich, good morning. Saw the thing about ‘Etalon’?”
“Saw it. Sit down. What are your thoughts?”
“I think ‘Tekhnolit’ is in a tight spot,” she said simply, sitting down. “Pressure on procurement. If they don’t give guarantees within 24 hours – look for an alternative. And.. the safety stock. Let’s risk the stock. The plan is more important”.
He listened to her even, unwavering voice. This was his own voice from five years ago. Tough, clear, unsentimental. And for some reason, it irritated him.
“What if we don’t apply pressure?” Alexey asked, surprising himself.
Anna slowly raised her eyes to him.
“Excuse me?”
“They’re not idiots. A failure happened. Maybe they had a fire, the director’s on a bender, or.. I don’t know. Maybe if we push now, next time they’ll just refuse our order?”
“That’s their problem,” Anna countered, but a flicker of bewilderment crossed her eyes. Not anger, but precisely bewilderment. She didn’t understand where he was going.
At that moment, the door swung open. Igor Semyonov, Head of Logistics, walked in.
“Lyokha, are you aware.. Anna, hello. There’s trouble with ‘Tekhnolit’”.
“What kind?” Alexey felt everything inside him tighten. The intuition he’d been drowning in numbers for years proved right.
“Their warehouse caught fire. Not the whole thing, but the section where they were assembling our batch. They’re panicking, don’t even know the timeline themselves”.
The silence became physically palpable. Anna broke it first, and her voice held not an “I told you so” gloat, but cold, professional despair.
“That’s it. Supplier reliability is zero. Emergency tender, revise the whole chain. We’ve got a disaster”.
“Wait,” Alexey interrupted. He stood and walked to the window. Morning mist was swirling beyond the gates. “Igor, did they ask for anything? Not make excuses, but ask for anything?”
Igor hesitated, glanced at Anna, then at Alexey.
“They asked.. not to bury them right away. To give them until evening to assess the damage. Promised an honest answer by six”.
“Until evening!” Anna snorted. “That’s another day’s delay!”
“And we’ll use it,” Alexey said sharply, turning around. His thoughts, previously sluggish, suddenly crystallized into a clear, albeit risky, scheme. “Anna, your job: squeeze everything you can out of line rescheduling, but without the safety stock. Calculate exactly how many days we can stretch this window. Not ‘if we can,’ but ‘for how many.’ Igor, call ‘Tekhnolit’ back. Tell them: we’re giving them until six. In return – total transparency. We need access to their recovery schedule, we want to see it online. And in parallel, quietly, search the market for even a couple of these blocks. Not as a replacement, but for backup. So we have some kind of leverage in our hands”.
“Alexey Sergeevich, the inventory KPI?” Anna asked, but without her previous certainty.
“It’s just a number now,” he said quietly, but firmly. “People were putting out a fire. Their chaos is worse than ours. We can finish them off, or we can try to help them out. The second option is cheaper in the long run”.
When they left, the office fell silent again. But now it was different – tense, charged with the decision just made, a decision that could just as easily turn into catastrophe.
He sat down and pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk. The smell of paper dust wafted out. There, under folders with old reports, lay his personal phone. One message, from five in the morning: “Dad, are you definitely coming today? I only have like three lines, but without you.. Mom says you’re probably going to be late again. It’s okay. Don’t bother. Good luck at work”.
He closed his eyes. A stupid school play. And his three lines, which, he knew, there would be none for.
He picked up a notepad, not a digital one, a regular, battered one. Wrote, pressing hard on the pen: “Warehouse fire. Don’t push. Diagnose. Reconfigure”. And below, for himself: “Evening. Point”.
He didn’t reach for the phone. First – do. Then – call.
On the monitor, the 15% risk still blinked. Alexey tapped the screen, brought up a manual entry window, and in the “action” field wrote: “In progress. Awaiting partner data. Backup – Plan B”.
For the first time in a long while, he wasn’t trying to kill the risk. He was trying to manage it.
Chapter 2: The Map and the Territory
The incident with “Tekhnolit” gave no respite. Not even four hours had passed before Anna Sokolova entered his office again. Not even entered – she squeezed in, holding a thick folder that smelled of fresh printouts.
“Time’s running out, Alexey Sergeevich,” she said, not sitting down. “Every hour is a loss. Here’s the plan. Three replacement suppliers, logistics calculations, draft contract termination. Approve it – I’ll launch it”.
Alexey glanced at the folder but didn’t take it. A lump of morning coffee sat in his throat.
“Gather the group in the small conference room,” he told Igor on the intercom. “Anna, financial director Viktor Petrovich, lawyer Elena. And.. call Olga from the key accounts department”.
“Olga?” Anna frowned. “Is this a client sandwich-hour? We have a production line on fire, not a social club”.
“The line on fire belongs to ‘Neftegazmontazh,’” Alexey corrected, standing up. “If we forget that, we’ll put out our fire, but their house will burn to the ground. And we’ll go down with it”.
The conference room smelled of old carpet and a recent meeting. Alexey stood by the flip chart, picked up a marker. The marker squeaked, smudging his finger.
“Colleagues,” he began, looking at their tense faces. “Before we act – one question. What problem are we actually solving?”
Viktor Petrovich, squinting behind his glasses, sighed audibly.
“Alexey Sergeevich, forgive me, but this sounds like an exercise for trainee managers. We have a schedule on fire. Money on fire. We need solutions, not questions”.
“The most expensive solutions are the wrong ones,” Alexey said, a rasp of fatigue creeping into his voice. “The ones that solve the wrong problem. We’ll put out a fire here and cause a flood in the next workshop”.
“And what is this.. certainty based on?” the financial director persisted, tapping his pen on his notepad. “The protocols weren’t pulled from thin air. They’ve been tested”.
Alexey fell silent. He wasn’t looking at Viktor Petrovich, but out the window, at the gray sky over the boiler house chimney. The question was fair.
“Tested,” he agreed quietly. “And they work, as long as the system is a simple machine. As long as a failure is just a bolt you can tighten. But when there’s a fire in the system.. you tighten the bolt, and the vibration causes your neighbor’s foundation to crumble”.
He turned to them, leaning on the edge of the table. The plastic gave slightly under his elbow.
“Five years ago. ‘Sibirgaz.’ Similar story. I acted by the book: pressure, ultimatum, emergency replacement. Formally, we met the deadline. But the client.. left. For good. Because our ‘success’ cost them so much stress and hidden costs that they preferred never to deal with us again. The plant lost over 80% of the profit from that contract in the long term. Only we don’t talk about it. We forgot”.
The room went quiet. Even Anna stopped flipping through her folder. No one mentioned that failure.
“Since then,” Alexey sighed, “I’ve been obsessed with one question. How to make decisions that don’t create new, bigger problems? I looked everywhere. Even at that stupid seminar Moscow sent us to six months ago. Remember that guy in the cardigan?”
Igor chuckled.
“The one talking about ‘the edge of chaos’ and ‘mental models’? Everyone thought he was from some cult”.
“That’s the one,” Alexey nodded. “He said one thing then. In a complex system, the problem rarely hurts where you think it does. It’s in the connections between the parts. And before you break anything, you need to understand the architecture of those connections. Draw a map. Back then, it seemed like nonsense. Now.. now we have a chance to test it. Or we’ll just put out one fire while starting another”.
Anna looked at him. Not with defiance now, but with heavy, weary interest. Like you’d look at someone who started digging a tunnel in an unknown direction.
“Fine,” she said. “Draw your map. But fast. We don’t have a day and a half for lectures”.
Round One: How We See It.
“Schedule disruption,” Anna blurted out immediately. “Hits the planned target. My bonus”.
“Increased operating costs,” Viktor Petrovich added, running his finger over the calculator on his phone. “Emergency procurement, overtime, potential fines. Hits quarterly margin. My bonus”.
“Legal risks,” Elena said quietly. “Penalties from ‘Neftegazmontazh’ per the contract. But also, terminating with ‘Tekhnolit’ without proper grounds – a lawsuit. My headache”.
“Shortage of ‘Block-K7,’” Igor summarized, looking at the ceiling. “It’s not there. Period”.
Alexey wrote on the board. It was a boring, predictable list. Disruption → Costs → Risks → No part.
“That’s the view from our bunker,” he said. “But the world is wider. Olga?”
Round Two: How They See It.
Olga put down her pen. She spoke slowly, as if weighing each word.
“For ‘Neftegazmontazh,’ the problem sounds like this: ‘Rig assembly delayed due to delayed supply from ‘Etalon.” For them, ‘Etalon’ isn’t just an order. It’s the cork in the bottle that’s about to pop right in their face. Their penalties from their customer are an order of magnitude higher than ours. Their reputation as a reliable contractor is on the line. Their losses aren’t our millions, but their tens of millions”.