Continued from Full-Stack Leadership – Upcoming book from PM Power – Post II
Setting of the book
As with our three previous books, this book is also set in a fictitious organization that is a combined reflection of many organizations that coaches and consultants of PM Power have worked with in their many years as leaders themselves, or as leadership consultants and coaches. Our representative leadership consultant and coach comes to this organization and is witness to the first phase of a major initiative by this organization – creating and bringing to market a highly innovative and pathbreaking technology and product. He is given access to all the leaders of this initiative for discussions and is allowed to observe all meetings including board meetings. He uses the inputs from these interactions as material for his book on leadership.
We bring the book he writes in the fictional world into the real world, our world, as this book. The discussions and meetings of this fictitious organization and our representative’s discussions with its leaders serve as case studies for this book Full Stack Leadership.
As in our previous books, we have employed a conversational style of writing in this one also. This makes it easy to read and, certainly, to write.
Author of the book
And, for the fourth time, as the “resident” writer, it fell on my, Paramu Kurumathur’s, head to write this book.
I was pretty decently equipped to write a book on leadership. Before I started working with PM Power as a consultant and coach, I had set up and developed the India Development Centre for one of the largest international IT organizations and served as its General Manager; I had started a startup and led it successfully as its CEO; I had led the development and implementation of the IT strategy of a large NGO across 40 countries as its CTO. I have also worked in various other leadership roles in my 44 years in the IT industry.
I was also pretty decently equipped to write a book on leadership. I was the sole author of two of the three books published by PM Power, Software Project Health – An Epic Retold and The Five Tantras of Enterprise Agility and a co-author of the third book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Enterprise Agility. I had also written a novel, The First Aryan, published by Penguin and a book on the Sanskrit language, 108 Facts about Sanskrit you didn’t know, published by Garuda Prakashan.
Product owner of the book
We roped in one of PM Power’s best coaches, consultants and leaders, and one of its founders, J. Veeraraaghavan (JV) as the Product Owner of the book project, the expert to ensure quality of the content of the book, and as my advisor. Before joining PM Power, JV served as the Managing Director of the GCC of one of the best networking organizations in the world. He has also served in various other leadership roles and capacities in his 43 years in the IT industry. JV’s inputs have been invaluable and make this book one that gives readers a fresh and detailed look at the dimensions, values, principles, and practices of full stack leadership. JV was the Product Owner of two of PM Power’s previous books and co-author of one of them.
It should be noted that this book belongs to PM Power. As such, everyone in PM Power must be thanked for providing innumerable inputs and for financing the writing and publishing of this work.
Sources for the book
Our PM Power consultants and coaches talked to the leaders of various software and other organizations, both big and small. We talked to leaders of product and service organizations, including GICs of multinationals. These discussions provided me with a tremendous amount of input and a number of stories about leadership successes and failures. I distilled these inputs and integrated them into the working of the fictitious organization from where our fictional representative gets his inputs. I also read many books and e-books which gave me a lot of ideas and inputs. I also got inputs from the internet through many blog posts. A bibliography is attached at the end of the book.
Process of writing of the book
This book was written over a period of around one year. As with my previous books, I shared my time between writing this book and another one, which is meant to be a popular book on Indian calendars. That book may take some more time to complete.
Two of the leadership principles of Leading self espoused in this book is Enjoying the journey, and Commitment to action. While writing the book, I completely dedicated myself to the task, and at the same time thoroughly enjoyed the process. I hope you, the reader, enjoy this book PM Power presents to you.
When will the book be published?
The book is expected to hit the stands before the middle of 2025.
Continued in Synopsis of Full-Stack Leadership – Upcoming book from PM Power – Post I
Note:
The following posts together give a complete summary of the new book from PM Power – Full-Stack Leadership
- Background and introduction to the book – 1
- Background and introduction to the book – 2
- Background and introduction to the book – 3
- Synopsis of the book – Introduction
- Synopsis of the book – Leading Business
- Synopsis of the book – Leading Execution
- Synopsis of the book – Leading Self
- Synopsis of the book – AI
- Endorsements
The book is available for purchase at the sites mentioned below.
9 Responses
An interesting “angle”! There is usually an emphasis on empathy among team members for better team work and self-organization. Would teams truly consider the manager/leader also as part of the team? Needs some mindset change. I think Emotional Intelligence training/coaching should bring out this aspect – that EI (Empathy being part of it) does not draw boundaries of applicability! Enjoyed reading a refreshingly different blog…
Thanks, Shiv. Yes, completely agree with your point on EI’s role in this regard. Gopal
Nice angle! And nice twist in the title of the blog!
Good perspective, which is normally missed.
🙏
Nice article, Gopal.
We all know one filed where downwards empathy is hardly ever seen, but upward empathy is expected and demanded. Politics.
😁
Nice article, Gopal! Very good insight. Practicing Empathy needs an effort as it needs seeing the world from the perspective of the another person. It is all the more difficult when you do not see everything that the other person sees. I remember one instance in my life when a manager reporting to me was promoted to senior manager’s post and moved away from me on a new, higher level assignment. After a few days she came to meet me and I enquired how she was doing on the new role. She said, “Milind now I know the kind of pressure you faced from above. You never passed that onto us and kept us shielded. Now I know how difficult your role and life is. I am trying to be like you!” So, the true empathy comes out of having experienced similar situations yourself.
So, Milind is the message “a little empathy is better than a late empathy”?
Gopal,
Nice blog.
This is a very valid and necessary perspective that everyone should have.
Somehow, in most organizations, just like ‘agile’ is considered as something for the teams and team members, these may be labeled as management and only for managers – as part of the leadership development plans.
Some ways how I have contextualized this in some situations:
• At an individual contributor level: connecting to empathy as a key skill for design thinking [observing and understanding users]
• At a team level: the togetherness and one-team idea [teams making commitments, the huddles in cricket and other sports etc], to use daily standups, for example, to recalibrate oneself after sensing how the others feel on that day or in a particular situation
• For managers: understanding and doing what they can, to make their managers successful, particularly when the complaint is that my manager does not understand me or my needs