In the first part of the podcast episode, Shiv Sivaguru is in conversation with Mohan Ram, a senior professional in the IT industry who has played various roles related to networking software development to business line management and now a coach with PM Power Consulting.

Mohan shares

• His growing years in a conservative family in Thanjavur district in Tamil Nadu
• About how his life was comfortable, not luxurious and how those days and culture had a strong influence on his life
• Getting into IT. probably more by chance and then liking the opportunities to apply logical thinking and solving problems for others and the gratification of seeing users benefitting from the solutions
• Moving to systems engineering and networks and looking at those technology areas and find applications in the commercial world
• The opportunity to be mentored and coached by good managers
• Discovering his strength of going beyond just technology and connect with customers, into more techno commercial roles
• His feeling of being thankful for being at the right places at the right times
• His interest in ancient wisdom, yoga, vedanta, music etc - all towards finding and keeping a balance in life
• Looking forward to the next phase of his life
• The support and concerns that he received from friends and family
• The opportunity to work with  geek, to contribute to create and refine a network operating system with one of the early startups in the networking space, that triggered his curiosity to get into software
• Getting into creating software products as well as services, particularly managed services 
• Seizing an opportunity to address new and greater challenges nd moving from C-DAC to HP
• The two important switches:
• Coming out of monotony
• Seeing a bigger opportunity
• An important aspect of being a good mentor; and learning to look at the forest and not get lost among the trees - leveraging his strength of paying attention to detail
• Switching to project and program management roles and stress the need to understand the nuances of project management

I asked him about how he was able to work in zones of abstraction or ambiguity, while interacting with customers - to understand requirements and come up with an approach or solution and create a project plan to execute, when his strength of attention  to detail.

The answer to this question and a lot more in part 2 of the conversation.

Mohan Ram is a Principal Consultant at PM Power Consulting, he works with Clients in their Agile Transformation initiatives, Digital Innovation and Transformation journey and helping build Individuals and Teams that are capable of effectively Delivering outcomes and Managing these Transformations in a Confident and Sustained manner.