Essential questions & leadership principles to navigate change, fear & uncertainty w/ Rukmini Reddy #214

23 snips

Apr 1, 2025

Rukmini Reddy, Senior Vice President of Engineering at PagerDuty, shares her insights on navigating change and uncertainty in tech leadership. She discusses the evolution of engineering roles post-pandemic, highlighting the rise of financial acumen and emotional intelligence. Reddy emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions to align teams with their mission and the necessity of creating safe spaces for open communication. Additionally, she introduces a seven-step framework to guide organizations through transitions, fostering a culture of resilience and adaptability.

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INSIGHT

2021 Leadership: Crisis & Resilience

Leadership in 2021 was dominated by crisis management and operational resilience.
The rapid digital shift demanded both keeping the business running and scaling rapidly under pressure.

INSIGHT

Resilience Amid AI Transformation

Resilience remains central for leaders from 2021 to 2025 but in highly agile and rapidly changing environments.
AI's swift integration is the latest paradigm shift impacting all workflows beyond traditional tech roles.

ADVICE

Prioritize Financial Acumen

Engineering leaders must develop strong financial acumen to meet evolving business needs.
Understanding costs and driving efficiency is now as critical as hiring once was.

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ABOUT RUKMINI REDDY

Rukmini Reddy is the Senior Vice President of Engineering, responsible for managing product and platform delivery, infrastructure, and data science. Reddy joins PagerDuty from Slack where she guided the vision, strategy, and execution of a comprehensive re-architecture, transforming the messaging software into an automation platform that empowered users to streamline their work.

Additionally, Rukmini spent over a decade in senior executive roles at various enterprise companies, where she built a strong track record in driving engineering and product strategy during periods of hyper-growth and product transformation across SaaS, B2B, and B2C business models.

Rukmini has a master of science degree in computer engineering from the University of Arkansas and earned a bachelor’s degree from Osmania University in computer science and engineering.

SHOW NOTES:

How the role of engineering leadership has evolved from 2021 to 2025 (2:35)
The rising importance of financial acumen & enduring importance of resilience in engineering leadership (5:28)
Key questions to ground and align your team with mission, vision, customer impact, and position to win the market (7:04)
What it means to become the leader your business needs (9:31)
“Hugging the elephant” and overcoming fear & uncertainty in 2021 vs. today (12:26)
Five questions to help you lead your team through transitions and change (16:03)
How to incorporate this framework to drive org change with empathy (18:10)
How to address questions about job security and future roles within an organization (20:21)
Strategies to guide your team through unspoken fears & unknowns (23:47)
Rukmini’s advice to create high-trust, high-impact sources of support through fear, uncertainty, and doubt for the first time (25:19)
Navigating org change from first principles (27:21)
How to move from the “informed pessimism” dip to “curious optimism” as a team & org (30:00)
Using evangelism & experimentation to tackle common adoption fears (34:07)
Examples of enablement & skill development / delivery (37:32)
The role of enforcement in the adoption transformation curve (39:07)
Rapid fire questions (42:33)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters -Richard P. Rumelt clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/