Uklon General Manager in Uzbekistan Eduard Kovtun names five books that shaped his approach to management

Five books from the head of Uklon in Uzbekistan

The outlet Spot.uz has published a list of five books recommended by Eduard Kovtun, general manager of the Uklon ride-hailing service in Uzbekistan. He immediately notes that he does not consider himself someone who reads a lot: most of his time is taken up by work, and he often finds new ideas in interviews, podcasts and conversations. His main criterion is not the number of pages read, but what stays with you from what you have read and proves useful in life.

Leadership, discipline and uncertainty

The first three books deal with leadership and decision-making. In The Captain Class , sports journalist Sam Walker examines teams with outstanding results and concludes that the leader is not necessarily the most talented or brightest player — their influence shows in demandingness, attitude to work and standards of behavior. Kovtun says this view resonates with him: he does not believe a manager must be the strongest specialist in every area, and he wants everyone on his team to know their own field better than he does. The Mamba Mentality by Kobe Bryant is, for him, about discipline and attention to detail: a good strategy guarantees nothing if execution is lacking. At the same time, he clarifies that he does not reduce success to hard work alone — circumstances and luck also matter. The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb he connects with strategic planning: any plan is built on assumptions, and it is dangerous to treat your own forecasts as a guaranteed scenario.

Projects and platform business

Deadline: A Novel about Project Management by Tom DeMarco Kovtun read during his transition from a commercial function to operational management. He liked the fictional format, and among its key ideas he highlights the one that adding people to a lagging project does not always speed up the result: new participants need time to get up to speed, and the team needs time to coordinate. The book most directly connected to his current work is the fifth one — The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen. Uklon, according to Kovtun, is a platform business where two sides of the market must be developed simultaneously: passengers care about pickup speed and price, while drivers need a sufficient number of orders and income; if one side is lacking, the other becomes harder to attract and retain. He recommends the book to those working with marketplaces and digital platforms, noting that it offers no universal growth recipe.

General approach to reading

Kovtun emphasizes that he did not try to assemble books on a single theme and is not looking for one book that will teach him how to manage. He finds it more interesting to pick up individual ideas, test them in practice and gradually shape his own approach. The common thread of the list, he says, is the ability to build strong teams, demandingness in execution, making decisions without complete information, and understanding how individual elements of a business affect one another.