July 2017. A summer evening. I’m in our company’s new office in the Petrašiūnai district of Kaunas. Behind me, the air is thick with +30°C heat, and the evening sun floods the room. Instead of enjoying a pleasant walk by the Kaunas Reservoir, I’m “copy-pasting” invoices for the fifth time today.
And I wonder: Is this really what my life as a CEO should look like?
At the time, we were probably the only PrestaShop company in Lithuania that worked the right way. We had been growing for three years, getting stronger, earning more. But the problems didn’t go away—there were too many projects, the team couldn’t keep up, clients were getting frustrated, and I… I was still “half of everything”—a developer, a tester, a project manager, and an analyst all in one.
I knew something had to change. It was time to expand.
I decided to expand the company because the number of projects was increasing, and they were becoming more complex. One project would become so large that, upon taking it on, we would no longer be able to serve the additional needs of existing clients. The latter would get angry, so we split employees into two pseudo teams: some create new projects, and others develop existing ones.
A NEW OFFICE – A NEW MILESTONE
In the spring of 2017, we moved to a new office on the eighth floor, overlooking the industrial landscape of Kaunas’ Petrašiūnai district. The workload was overwhelming—I often stayed late, so the security guards called me “the second shift.”
I wasn’t sure whether to take it as a compliment or a joke.
With the new office and our growing team, we welcomed our first long-term employees—some of whom are still with us today. Our senior developer shattered my belief that all employees were unmotivated. He was skilled, responsible, always on time, eager to learn, and quickly grasped tasks.
One day, we noticed something strange. While checking server logs, a colleague and I realized that a recurring task was running successfully… despite no CRON job set up.
It turned out that our new hire had been manually running the command every morning, without fail, without being asked.
This was my first real lesson in leadership: if you hire the right people and give them clear responsibilities, they will go above and beyond.
WHEN I FIRST REALIZED I WASN’T A MANAGER (or LEADER)
A question kept bothering me: If someone else can do the programming, someone else can manage projects instead of me.
So we hired an experienced project manager. Her first task? Prepare a contract using our template.
She completed the task… but with incorrect client details. We fixed it. Next time—same mistake.
I got frustrated. – Look, this is unacceptable!
She replied: – How can I do this correctly without instructions, processes, or internal systems? How am I supposed to know?
That was my “AHA!” moment. The problem wasn’t the employees but the lack of a system.
As we hired more people, I started noticing patterns. Some employees understood everything instantly, while others struggled no matter how often I explained.
And after hiring a few more people and starting to compare them—one you tell, and they do it, another you can shout at, and it still “doesn’t sink in”—I started looking for an answer. It did not take long. My first answer came from an excellent book by Tomas Misiukonis , “Vadovas per 24 val.” (Leader in 24 Hours).
HOW TO BECOME A LEADER IN 24 HOURS?
Do you know those “For Dummies” books? They don’t seem valuable at first, but they lay the foundation. Still thinking with a programmer’s mindset, I accidentally found a similar book in a bookstore and thought, “It won’t hurt.”
At that time, I knew nothing about leadership. I had never heard of coaching, reward systems, or structured motivation techniques. The motivation was either a carrot or a stick, and salaries were set based on what I thought someone was worth.
But this book changed everything.
It became the key to my success, unlocking a journey of learning that would eventually consume all the profits my company earned, all my time, and—what I often say—two more university degrees after my KTU master’s.
A NEW TOOL – FEEDBACK MEETINGS
That time, from this book, I took away the most essential things—agreements and performance feedback meetings. After reading this book, I would spend about two to three hours preparing for one meeting. That’s how much I wanted to be good and how much I tried.
I looked at a handwritten note in my first meeting and did not hear what the employee said. Everything seemed so artificial as I tried to follow the pre-prepared script and not deviate from the topic. And yet—it worked! Almost immediately, with the first meetings, positive changes occurred in the company.
Since then, in our company, feedback meetings have been held every three months. This became an opportunity for talented employees to multiply—some of them, in just six months, managed to increase their salary by 500 or even 600 EUR in hand.
On the other hand, it took me at least another year or two to truly understand what I was doing wrong and to gain practical experience from training and employee communication to grasp what I had read back in 2017. All of this summarizes my new lessons and growth stage, along with the office change.
Leadership is not an innate talent. It’s a skill that can be learned.
WHAT DID I LEARN FROM THE NEW OFFICE?
💡 1. Crisis forces you to seek answers. When things are “fine,” you don’t question them. But when you hit a wall, you have no choice but to evolve.
💡 2. Leadership is not the same as technology. In programming, an error is an error—clear and fixable. In leadership, things are rarely that simple. Managing people requires time, patience, and continuous learning.
💡 3. Not knowing isn’t the problem. Refusing to change is. Leadership is just like programming—if you invest time and effort, you can master it.
💡 4. The decision to change is the most crucial step. In 2017, I chose to grow as a specialist and a leader.
💡 5. If you don’t know what to look for, follow the best. Back then, there weren’t many books or resources on leadership in Lithuania. I was lucky to find great consultants—but that’s a story for another post.