The thing that doesn't go away by being managed.

A decision has been made. The team has a plan. People know what needs to happen next.

And yet, a conversation keeps returning. Perhaps the bad news has become too polite. Perhaps the words everyone uses to describe what happened no longer quite fit. The work continues, but something has cracked.

You may have seen this in a team or heard it from a client. You may recognise it in your own life. You don't have to decide yet what it means.

The work begins by not walking past what the crack reveals.

“What Breaking Opens” is now available for pre-order. Every order helps this conversation take physical form – a book in Latvian and English that you can hold in your hands, read slowly and pass on.

It started with doubt, turned into a conversation, grew into a friendship. Nobody rushed to agree.

Damir was preparing a talk about mistakes. For thirty years, he had spoken around the world about success, innovation and the future. This time, the organisers asked him to do the opposite. When he sat down to write, nothing came. The answer had been in his room all along: a small kintsugi bowl.

The cracks were his mistakes. The gold was what he did with them.

Damir's question: What if the crack is where your leadership begins?

When Thomas first heard Damir's keynote and his story about kintsugi, he was cautious about the metaphor. He wondered whether the kintsugi image could become a beautiful frame for stories that move people but lead to no real change. Could we speak honestly about breaking, even when it does not make us look better? Could a leadership team hear bad news before it is softened into words that trouble no one?

They talked, disagreed and kept the conversation going. Out of that exchange grew “What Breaking Opens.”

Olga Roze translated the book while her own family was coming apart. The book became an ally as she went through her own breaking. What mattered to her was hearing what remains between the words – and allowing both authors to sound like themselves in another language.

Now this conversation is looking for readers: people who will carry it into their lives, coaches who will bring it into their sessions, and leaders who will take it into their teams.

Two paths. One conversation.

Damir Tomicic

Damir Tomicic is a serial entrepreneur who has spent more than 30 years building technology companies and professional communities. In 2001, in the aftermath of the dot-com crash, he co-founded Axinom Group and led it as CEO and CFO for 23 years, through the financial crisis and the pandemic. For 20 years he was president of INETA Europe, helping its developer community grow to two million members. Today he advises leaders on AI and technology strategy through his firm Business in Tech.

For most of that time, Damir spoke about what worked. In What Breaking Opens, he writes about what didn’t: the decisions he got wrong, and what it takes to keep leading after them. He writes from inside those decisions, as someone who had to explain them to his teams, partners and investors, and then live with what followed. Writing the book with Thomas meant being questioned where he was used to being certain.

Thomas Bothe

Thomas Bothe is a former CEO who has worked since 2000 as an independent trainer, coach and sparring partner to CEOs and management teams, mostly in medium-sized companies across Europe. Clients turn to him when friction keeps returning, conversations become difficult, strategy feels unclear or decisions stall.

Thomas calls himself a “Transformation Space Janitor”: someone who clears blockages in the space without taking over the transformation. He is known for unexpected metaphors, counterintuitive questions, a reassuring presence and self-deprecating humour that can ease tension without shying away from the issue. Writing What Breaking Opens with Damir has deepened his approach.

Perhaps you want everything to be as it was.

When something breaks, the first wish is often to repair it: to restore a relationship, a team, the trust you once had in yourself. To return to the feeling that you know who you are and what you can rely on.

Sometimes that is possible. Sometimes returning no longer feels like the whole answer. You may not yet know what else to hope for.

Thomas asks what might lie beyond the wish to restore what was: a meaning or possibility you could not have seen before. It cannot be planned in advance.

Damir asks whether, after what happened, you can trust yourself again – whether you can face the truth about your mistakes and still lead.

Olga asks what might change if faith in your ability to go through breaking grew stronger than your fear of it.

These questions do not promise that pain will prove worthwhile or turn into growth. They leave room for what is not yet known. Perhaps one belongs to you. Perhaps it belongs to a client or a team you work with.

Can I still trust myself?

What happens if I say out loud what I already see?

If I can no longer go back, will I be able to live in what comes next?

The book cannot answer these questions for you. It can stay beside you while you sit with them.

You don't have to be ready to call it growth. The wish to be truthful is enough.

A book to return to.

One story may make you pause at a mistake you have tried to forget quickly. Another – at the moment when bad news in a team became ever more polite, until no one understood what was really going on.

Each chapter ends with questions. You can reflect on them alone, bring them into a coaching session, or put them on the table with a leadership team. A coach might give a client one chapter to read between sessions and return to its questions together. Thomas and Damir don't always agree with each other. The reader doesn't have to agree with them either. Meaning comes from staying with a question long enough to hear your own answer.

The English and Latvian texts appear on facing pages, English on the left and Latvian on the right. You can follow a thought in both languages and notice how its shade changes.

One chapter at a time. Real attention to the questions after it – whether you read alone or return to them between sessions.

Give a book that can become the start of a conversation.

Some books are put on a shelf. This one can be opened together.

For coaches, What Breaking Opens can be a gift and a tool for shared work. You might hand it to a client at the start of an engagement, return to its questions between sessions, or give it to a client's leadership team before an offsite.

For CEOs and executives, it can be placed in the hands of every member of a leadership team before a difficult conversation. It can also be a year-end or new-year gift for key people, accompanied by an invitation to think, talk and truly hear one another.

If you are planning to order 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 copies, register your interest now.

This gives the publisher time to agree with you on the quantity and discuss delivery arrangements and timing.

Larger orders and delivery options are arranged individually.

Pre-order “What Breaking Opens”

By pre-ordering, you help this conversation become a book someone can hold in their hands. You get your own copy and show that there is room for honest conversations about mistakes, vulnerability, leadership and disagreement.

Title: What Breaking Opens | Ko lūzums atver
Authors:: Thomas Bothe and Damir Tomicic
Translator:: Olga Roze
Publisher:: foundation “Fonds Cilvēkiem”

A bilingual A4 hardcover edition (210 × 297 mm, portrait), with 304 interior pages, including 31 illustrated pages. English appears on the left-hand page and Latvian on the right. Body text set in 12 pt. Stories and questions at the end of each chapter.

Pre-order price: 50 € per copy.

Production note: printing takes approximately three weeks once it begins.

Choose one copy for yourself, several for people you want to share it with, or request a larger order for your team.

Personal orders are paid straight away by card. A team request is not a payment – we will contact you to agree on quantity, delivery and invoicing.

Interested in an edition in your language?

The Latvian–English edition is the first. If you are a publisher, coach or leader interested in bringing What Breaking Opens to readers in another language alongside English, tell us which language and how you would like to be involved.

What Breaking Opens