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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insights 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.
insights 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.
volunteer_activism 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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In *Good Strategy/Bad Strategy*, Richard Rumelt clarifies the distinction between effective and ineffective strategies. He argues that a good strategy is a specific and coherent response to overcoming obstacles, harnessing power where it will have the greatest effect. Rumelt debunks elements of 'bad strategy' such as equating goals, motivational slogans, and financial targets with actual strategy. He introduces the 'kernel' of strategy, which includes a diagnosis of the challenge, a guiding policy, and coherent action. The book uses diverse examples from business, nonprofit, and military contexts to illustrate these concepts and emphasizes the importance of analytical rigor and focused effort in strategy development.
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.
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