Vibe Coding is not engineering!

It's a starting point. It's exciting. It's powerful. It puts capability in the hands of people who never had it before — and that part is genuinely beautiful.

But it is not engineering.

And if we don't make that distinction clearly — right now, while the world is still figuring out what AI actually means for how we build things — we are going to repeat the same mistakes. Just faster. And at greater scale.

🤔 So what exactly is Vibe Coding?

Vibe Coding is the practice of using AI to generate code based on natural language prompts.

You describe what you want. AI builds it. You iterate. Things get made.

It feels like magic. And in many ways — it is!

For the first time in history, someone with no formal engineering background can describe an idea in plain language and watch it come to life. That is genuinely revolutionary. I don't want to diminish that for a single second.

But here's the problem nobody is talking about.

Most people who jump into Vibe Coding have no idea what they actually want to build.

They have a rough idea. A feeling. A direction. But not clarity.

And when you give AI a rough idea without clarity — AI doesn't pause and ask you to think harder.

AI builds.

It builds fast. It builds completely. It builds confidently.

And it builds exactly what you asked for — which is often not what you actually needed.

🚗 The Mercedes problem

Let me give you the clearest example I know.

Imagine you need to get somewhere. You need a vehicle.

So you go to AI and say — "I need a vehicle."

No context. No constraints. No design thinking upfront.

AI gives you a Mercedes-Benz. 🚗

Technically superior. Beautifully engineered. State of the art in every way.

But in your mind — you needed a cycle or a motorcycle. Because you need to navigate a narrow street in a busy neighbourhood. A street the Mercedes cannot even enter.

The Mercedes is not wrong. AI did exactly what you asked.

You were under-specified.

That is the core problem with Vibe Coding as a standalone practice.

AI overproduces when humans under-specify.

And the solution is not to use less AI. The solution is to think more clearly before you use it.

That thinking — that clarity — that intentional design before execution — is what separates Vibe Engineering from Vibe Coding.

⚙️ So what is Vibe Engineering?

Vibe Engineering is Vibe Coding with engineering discipline built in from the start.

It doesn't reject AI. It amplifies AI — by giving it something it desperately needs to work well.

Human clarity.

Vibe Engineering starts with design. Always!

Before a single line of code is generated, before a single prompt is written — you design. You think. You define what you actually want to build, what problem you are solving, who it is for, and what success looks like.

Then — and only then — you bring in AI to orchestrate the execution.

This is not a new idea. It is actually one of the oldest ideas in engineering.

Think about the best civil engineers. Think about the best architects. They spend the majority of their time thinking, designing, and planning — before a single brick is laid. Because every decision made at the design stage saves ten decisions at the execution stage.

Vibe Engineering applies that same principle to the AI era.

🛡️ In SHIELD, every mission started with intelligence, planning, and strategy — before anyone suited up or set foot in the field. Fury didn't send his best people in without a plan. The planning is what made the execution possible.

That's Vibe Engineering.

🔄 Introducing the Iterative D3O Model

At the heart of Vibe Engineering is a framework I developed from years of leading engineering teams — a framework I call the Iterative D3O Model.

D3O stands for Design, Develop, Deploy, Operate.

And the key word is Iterative — because this is not a linear process. It is a continuous loop.

Design — Define clearly what you want to build. What problem are you solving? Who is it for? What does success look like? What are the constraints? This is the thinking work. This is where most teams move too fast.

Develop — Now you build. With AI as your partner, development becomes faster than ever before. But it is fast because the design was clear — not despite the lack of it.

Deploy — You ship. You put it in front of real users or real systems and watch what happens.

Operate — You observe. You learn. You gather feedback. And then — critically — you feed that learning back into the Design phase. The loop begins again.

This is the loop that never ends. And it is the loop that makes everything better over time.

Most teams today are stuck in a broken version of this loop — where they skip Design entirely, rush through Develop, struggle through Deploy, and spend most of their time in Operate — firefighting, fixing, patching.

Vibe Engineering fixes the loop by restoring what was always supposed to come first.

Design.

🌍 Why this matters right now

The world is moving fast. AI is moving faster.

Every week there is a new tool, a new capability, a new way to generate something that used to take months.

And in that rush — in that excitement — there is a very real danger that we skip thinking altogether. That we mistake speed for progress. That we generate our way into problems we then have to spend years fixing.

I've seen this happen before. Not with AI — but with the agile movement.

When agile arrived, it was revolutionary. Move fast. Iterate. Ship early. Get feedback.

But somewhere along the way, "move fast" became "skip design." Agility became an excuse to not think. And teams ended up moving very fast — in the wrong direction.

😳 We cannot make the same mistake with AI.

AI gives us the most powerful execution capability in the history of software engineering. But execution without design is just expensive chaos.

Vibe Engineering is the bridge between the excitement of AI capability and the discipline of engineering thinking.

It is not about slowing down. It is about thinking clearly — so that when you move, you move in the right direction, at full speed, with AI amplifying every step.

🛡️ A word about how this series is written

You just read about designing before building. About thinking clearly before executing. About giving AI the clarity it needs to do its best work.

This post itself is a demonstration of that principle.

This series is openly co-authored with AI — and I want to be specific about how, because the how matters.

Think about the greatest biographies you've ever read. The ones that felt alive, vivid, deeply human. In most cases, those books weren't written entirely by the person whose name is on the cover.

The thoughts, the experiences, the voice — entirely theirs. The craft of translating that voice onto the page — shaped by a writer who worked closely alongside them.

That writer rarely got credited. 🤐

I'm doing this differently.

🎙️ ChatGPT Voice captures my raw thinking as I speak — unfiltered, unscripted, exactly as it comes out of my head in the moment.

✍️ Claude AI then takes that transcript and acts as writer and editor — structuring the ideas, sharpening the language, and making sure what you read actually reflects what I meant to say.

🎨 Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro crafts the cover image for each post — bringing the visual identity of Vibe Engineering to life.

The thinking is mine. The voice is mine. The 27 years of experience are mine.

The craft of putting it on the page — and the image on the cover — is shaped by AI. And every AI that contributes gets credited.

That itself is Vibe Engineering in action.

✅ The difference in one line

Vibe Coding asks — what can I build?

Vibe Engineering asks — what should I build, and why?

That one question — asked before anything else — changes everything that follows.

💬 Have you ever built something with AI that solved the wrong problem? What happened?

Next — VE #3.

The Iterative D3O Model in depth. What it looks like in practice. How it changes the way you work with AI. And why Design is the most underrated skill in the AI era.

See you Friday, April 10th at 12:05 PM IST. 🛡️

Humans architect. AI orchestrates. Everyone builds.

— Swami K / @iswamik

#VibeEngineering #VibeCoding #AIEngineering #HumAI #BuildWithAI

I asked AI to solve a simple calculation.

It wrote code.

My first reaction was pure confusion. Why would it do that? It's a simple calculation — not a software problem. This is overkill. This makes no sense.

But then something shifted inside me.

I thought — okay. If it does this for something this simple, what happens when I push it?

So I pushed it.

🧪 The experiment that changed everything

I started giving it complex problems. Data analysis tasks I would normally solve using macros and formulas in Google Sheets. Then I went further — things I had previously built using Python, pandas, and Spark.

Tasks that used to take me weeks of thinking. Weeks of trial and error. Weeks of debugging, refining, marinating ideas until they finally worked the way I wanted them to.

It generated them in seconds.

Not perfectly. Not always correctly. But it did them — seamlessly, connecting different pieces together in a way that stopped me completely cold.

That's when I said something out loud that I still believe today.

💡 It wasn't just writing code. It was thinking in code.

And in that moment, I knew — this is going to change the game of engineering forever.

Not just how we build things. How we think about building things.

But here's what nobody talks about when they tell these "AI moment" stories.

The tool wasn't the real breakthrough. The mindset shift was.

And that mindset shift only meant something to me because of two people who had already started shifting my thinking — long before that absurd calculation moment arrived.

🧠 Two people who changed my direction

This didn't happen in isolation.

I had been following Patrick Debois closely on LinkedIn for years. Many call him the father of DevOps — though he himself prefers not to be boxed into that title anymore. What fascinated me was never just what he said. It was how he kept evolving.

From DevOps. To DevSecOps. And then gradually, quietly, moving into something new — talking about AI writing code, talking about what AI could mean for how we build, before most people even knew what to call it.

That was one spark.

The second came from Andrew Ng's Generative AI for Everyone course.

That experience was genuinely life-changing. Not because it taught me tools or techniques — but because it rewired how I think. About building. About engineering. About what is possible for anyone, anywhere, with the right mindset and the right tools in their hands.

Between Patrick Debois' evolution and Andrew Ng's insights — something started shifting inside me that I couldn't ignore.

I started asking a different question.

Not — what can AI do?

But — what does this mean for how engineering should actually work?

🏗️ What I had been watching for years

Long before ChatGPT. Long before AI-generated code. Long before Vibe Coding became a buzzword on every feed.

I started my technology journey in 1999.

By 2001 — barely two years in — I had already moved into leadership.

Leading teams. Building operations from scratch. Designing systems that had to hold under real pressure. And for over two decades after that — I kept seeing the same pattern repeat itself. Across every team I led. Every company I worked with. Every industry I touched.

Engineers are smart. Engineers are capable. Engineers are passionate — especially early in their careers, when the excitement of building something real is still fresh and alive.

But most of them are not engineering.

🔁 They are fixing what broke yesterday.

🔁 They are handling what is on fire today.

🔁 They are unknowingly setting themselves up to repeat it all tomorrow.

It became a loop. A trap. And most teams didn't even realize they were inside it.

Every time I tried to push something meaningful forward — to build something that actually mattered, to move the needle instead of just keeping the lights on — the answer was almost always the same.

"The team is tied up with something important right now."

"We'll get to it later."

"Just give us a few weeks to clear this backlog."

But later never came. The backlog never cleared. And the meaningful work kept getting pushed further and further away.

The passion that brought people into engineering in the first place? It was quietly disappearing. Buried under daily firefighting, urgent requests, and a present that consumed everything — leaving nothing for the future.

😳 The civil engineer problem

I started explaining this pattern with an analogy that I still use today.

Think about a civil engineer.

Their job — their entire purpose — is to design and architect. To think deeply before anything gets built. To make decisions at the drawing board that determine the quality, safety, and longevity of everything that follows.

Now imagine that same civil engineer spending their days mixing cement, laying pipes, and placing bricks one by one.

That's not engineering. That's labour.

And with full respect to everyone who has lived this — that's what a lot of software engineering had quietly become.

Engineers spending the majority of their time on low-level execution. On tasks that a well-designed system should handle automatically. On work that kept the present alive but did nothing to build the future.

I saw this pattern for years. I talked about it constantly. I pushed back against it wherever I could.

But for most of that time — I didn't have a clean, complete answer to it.

Then late 2022 happened.

⚡ The Karthik experiments

After that absurd moment with the simple calculation — I didn't just sit with the insight. I started acting on it.

I began discussing with Karthik — a young SRE on my team, curious, sharp, and willing to go on a crazy journey with me — that we should not just use AI to generate code.

We should go further.

• AI should generate code.

• Execute that code.

• And then improve it continuously based on human feedback — something like reinforcement learning from human feedback, but applied practically to our daily engineering work.

At that time, this thinking was far ahead of what tools could actually do.

Naturally, people around me — including Karthik, and Noordeen and Aravindan on the team — thought this was just another one of my wild ideas.

😄 And honestly? They were completely used to that.

But wild ideas backed by persistence have a way of eventually becoming real.

We moved step by step.

First — AI for code generation. Just getting comfortable with what it could do.

Then — figuring out execution. How do we go from generated code to running code?

Then — thinking about feedback loops. How does the system improve over time based on what we learn?

Over time, we reached a point that actually went beyond what we had initially imagined when we started.

We experimented with several tools along the way — some open-source, some still fragile and unreliable at that stage. The first real breakthrough came when we started using Aider.

That's when things became practical. That's when the loop started working. That's when this whole journey started feeling less like a crazy idea and more like something genuinely real.

🎯 The insight that tied everything together

Through all of those experiments, one question kept coming back to me.

Why are some engineers thriving with AI while others are drowning in it?

It wasn't skill. It wasn't experience. It wasn't even how much they knew about AI or how long they had been using it.

It was clarity.

The engineers who were thriving weren't the ones who knew the most. They were the ones who knew clearly what they wanted — before they ever opened an AI tool. They had thought through their intent. They had designed before they executed.

And the ones who were struggling? They were jumping straight into generation. Asking AI to build without first deciding what to build. Moving fast without a direction.

AI didn't fix the firefighting loop.

For most people — it made it faster.

Unless you started with design. Unless you started with clarity. Unless you treated engineering the way it was always meant to be treated — architecture first, execution second.

🛡️ Fury didn't need more agents. He needed a better system. A platform where great people could finally operate at their full potential. The Helicarrier wasn't just a ship — it was the infrastructure that made everything else possible.

That's what I started building.

Not a tool. Not a process. A way of thinking about building in the AI era.

I call it Vibe Engineering.

🚀 What this all means

Vibe Engineering is my answer to the firefighting loop.

It starts with design — with clarity of intent before execution begins. It combines human architecture with AI orchestration in a continuous loop that makes both better over time.

It's built on one belief I've held for 27 years and never once wavered from:

Spend more time on design and architecture. So that you spend less time on development, deployment, and operations.

What was hard to achieve consistently before AI is now becoming real. What I believed for years is finally becoming practical.

And that is exactly where Vibe Engineering comes alive.

🛡️ A word about how this series is written

You just read a story built from 27 years of living this — and shaped by AI.

That's not a contradiction. That's the point.

This series is openly co-authored with AI — and I want to be specific about how, because the how matters.

Think about the greatest biographies you've ever read. The ones that felt alive, vivid, deeply human. In most cases, those books weren't written entirely by the person whose name is on the cover.

The thoughts, the experiences, the voice — entirely theirs. The craft of translating that voice onto the page — shaped by a writer who worked closely alongside them.

That writer rarely got credited. 🤐

I'm doing this differently.

🎙️ ChatGPT Voice captures my raw thinking as I speak — unfiltered, unscripted, exactly as it comes out of my head in the moment.

✍️ Claude AI then takes that transcript and acts as writer and editor — structuring the ideas, sharpening the language, and making sure what you read actually reflects what I meant to say.

🎨 Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro crafts the cover image for each post — bringing the visual identity of Vibe Engineering to life.

The thinking is mine. The voice is mine. The 27 years of experience are mine.

The craft of putting it on the page — and the image on the cover — is shaped by AI. And every AI that contributes gets credited.

That itself is Vibe Engineering in action.

✅ The breakthrough isn't always the moment you find the answer. Sometimes it's the moment you finally understand the right question.

💬 What was the moment that made you rethink how you build things?

Next — VE #2.

The difference between Vibe Coding and Vibe Engineering. Why one is a trap and the other is a discipline. And why it matters more right now than ever before.

See you Wednesday, April 8th at 12:05 PM IST. 🛡️

Humans architect. AI orchestrates. Everyone builds.

— Swami K / @iswamik

How many LinkedIn posts about AI and engineering did you scroll past this week?

Ten? Twenty? More?

Vibe Coding. AI-generated apps. No-code revolutions. Tools that promise to replace engineers, democratize building, and change everything — all before lunch.

You've seen them. You've scrolled past them. Maybe you've even rolled your eyes at a few.

😄 I don't blame you. I would too.

But I'm asking you to stay with this one.

Not because I have something to sell. Not because I have a course to pitch or a tool to promote.

Because I have something to say that has taken over 3 years — and 24 years before that — to be able to say clearly.

And I think it's going to matter to you.

🤔 Here's what nobody is saying out loud

Everyone is excited about Vibe Coding. And honestly — I get it.

Watching AI build something from a simple prompt feels like magic. It's fast. It's exciting. It's available to anyone with a laptop and an idea right now.

But here's what nobody is saying out loud —

Most people jumping into Vibe Coding have absolutely no idea what they actually want to build.

They're generating before they've thought. Executing before they've designed. Moving fast in a direction they haven't chosen yet.

And that's not a tool problem.

⚡ That's a thinking problem.

AI — being the powerful, eager, overproducing machine that it is — will happily give them something. It just won't be what they actually needed.

Let me give you a simple example.

Imagine you need to get through a narrow street. In your mind — a cycle or a motorcycle. Simple. Nimble. Perfect for the job.

But you just say — "I need a vehicle."

No context. No design. No clarity.

AI gives you a Mercedes-Benz. 🚗

Technically superior. Beautifully engineered. But completely useless — because it can't even enter that street.

That's what happens when you skip design and jump straight to generation. AI doesn't lack capability. You lacked clarity.

That gap — between what AI produces and what you actually need — is exactly what Vibe Engineering closes.

🏗️ What this series is actually about

Vibe Engineering is not a tool. Not a framework you install. Not a productivity hack.

It's a way of thinking about building — combining human clarity with AI capability — so that anyone, regardless of background, can become the architect of their own vision.

I've spent 25 years in technology. Built teams from scratch. Designed systems that survived real pressure. And through all of it — I kept seeing the same pattern repeat across every team, every company, every industry.

Most teams are not building the future. They are surviving the present.

🔁 Fixing what broke yesterday.

🔁 Handling what's on fire today.

🔁 Unknowingly setting themselves up to repeat it all tomorrow.

That's not engineering. That's firefighting with a job title.

Vibe Engineering is my answer to that pattern.

⚡ Why right now

The world is obsessed with Vibe Coding. I understand why — watching AI build something from a simple prompt feels like magic.

But magic without intention is just chaos.

If you don't know clearly what you want — if you skip design and jump straight to generation — AI will give you something. It just won't be what you actually needed.

That gap — between what AI produces and what you actually need — is exactly what Vibe Engineering closes.

🛡️ A word about how this series is written

I want to be upfront about something most creators aren't honest about.

This series is openly co-authored with AI — and I want to be specific about how, because the how matters.

Think about the greatest biographies you've ever read. The ones that felt alive, vivid, deeply human. In most cases, those books weren't written entirely by the person whose name is on the cover.

The thoughts, the experiences, the voice — entirely theirs. The craft of translating that voice onto the page — shaped by a writer who worked closely alongside them.

That writer rarely got credited. 🤐

I'm doing this differently.

🎙️ ChatGPT Voice captures my raw thinking as I speak — unfiltered, unscripted, exactly as it comes out of my head in the moment.

✍️ Claude AI then takes that transcript and acts as writer and editor — structuring the ideas, sharpening the language, and making sure what you read actually reflects what I meant to say.

🎨 Google Gemini Nano Banana Pro crafts the cover image for each post — bringing the visual identity of Vibe Engineering to life.

The thinking is mine. The voice is mine. The 27 years of experience are mine.

The craft of putting it on the page — and the image on the cover — is shaped by AI. And every AI that contributes gets credited.

That itself is Vibe Engineering in action.

Fury didn't announce the Avengers Initiative with a press release. He walked into a room, placed

🚀 What's coming

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting April 7th at 12:05 PM IST — one post. Each one numbered. Each one a step deeper into what Vibe Engineering actually means, looks like, and does for the people who embrace it.

For engineers who feel stuck in a loop they didn't choose. For non-engineers who have ideas but not the means. For QA, DevOps, RevOps professionals who never saw themselves as builders. For anyone who has ever thought — I wish I could build that.

This series is for you. 🙌

Vibe Engineering {VE} #1 — Origin Story. How I got here. The experiments. The failures. The moment it all clicked.

✅ See you Monday, April 7th at 12:05 PM IST.

Humans architect. AI orchestrates. Everyone builds.

— Swami K / @iswamik

In my last dispatch, I talked about mentors who confuse you on purpose — and how you only understand them after they're gone.

This one is different. This one is about a movie that understood me better than I understood myself. 🎬

Let me confuse you. 🎯

📌 The Dot: Becoming Someone Completely New

Tony Fadell, the guy who built the iPod and the iPhone, wrote this in his book Build:

"My life has swung wildly between success and failure, incredible career highs immediately followed by bitter disappointment. And with each failure I chose to start from scratch, take all that I'd learned and do something completely new, become someone completely new."

When I read this, I didn't just nod along.

I felt it deep in my gut — that churning recognition when someone puts words to your own experience. 🎯

Because I've lived it. The wild swings. The highs crashing into lows. The bitter disappointment that sits in your chest like a stone.

But here's where my story takes a different turn.

Fadell says he became someone completely new. Like he deleted the old version and installed a fresh one.

I didn't do that.

I did something weirder. Something I learned from a big green superhero. 💚

Stay with me.

📌 The High: When Everything Was Working

Let me take you back to 2015. 📅

We were building a SaaS product — a point-and-click CI/CD solution. Think of it as a tool that helps software teams ship code faster, without all the complicated setup.

And man, things were clicking into place like puzzle pieces. 🧩

⚡ We had a solid team who believed in the vision

⚡ We got mentored by founders who had just sold their startup to a big company

⚡ We had beta customers ready to test our product

⚡ We learned Product Management from scratch — how to build an MVP, how to think like a product person

This was my second shot at entrepreneurship. And this time, I told myself: "I've finally cracked it. I'm never going back to a regular job. This is it."

My co-founder bootstrapped everything — poured in his own money to keep us alive. I supported by not taking a salary for months and letting go of my appraisals without ever pursuing them. We built the MVP with our bare hands.

And when the product was ready, we prepared like warriors going into battle. 🛡️

Demo? Polished. Slide deck? Beautiful. Elevator pitch? Practiced a hundred times. Mock pitches to our network? Everyone was impressed.

We lined up meetings with investors.

This was our moment.

📌 The Crash: Two Sentences Into the Pitch

Here's what nobody tells you about investor meetings. 🚪

Sometimes they don't even let you finish your elevator pitch.

Our elevator pitch was two lines. Two lines. And most investors would cut us off before we finished the second sentence.

They didn't want to see the demo. They didn't want to flip through the deck. They didn't even want to hear the idea fully.

Just... no. Next. Goodbye.

The first rejection stung. The second one hurt. By the third and fourth, we knew something was deeply wrong — but we couldn't figure out what. 😶

Then came the meeting that cracked the code. 🔓

One investor did the usual thing — cut us off mid-elevator-pitch. But then he did something different. He grabbed our laptop and ran through the slide deck himself. Fast. Impatient. Scanning.

Then he stopped and asked: "How do you handle Marketing? Sales? Finance? What's your runway? Cashflow projections? CAC? Churn rate?"

I remember looking at my co-founder. We were both Techno Functional guys. We knew code. We knew architecture. We knew how to build products.

But runway? CAC? Churn rate? We fumbled. Badly. 🥴

Our answers weren't seamless like they were for the technical questions. We were clearly out of our depth.

The investor wasn't even interested in our Techno Functional brilliance. He dropped solid advice: "Either one of you needs to learn Business Function, or you bring in a co-founder who owns it. Business Function is more critical than Techno Function for a startup to survive."

That was the first time I heard terms like runway, cashflow, CAC, churn rate spoken as non-negotiables.

The dot: Fadell talks about "bitter disappointment." Not just disappointment. Bitter. I finally understood what that word meant. Bitter is when you did everything right in your domain — and it still didn't work because you didn't even know the other domain existed.

📌 The Aftermath: Everything Falls Apart

What happens when the investor door slams shut?

Everything behind it starts crumbling. 🧱

I had to walk away. From the venture. From the team. From the co-founder who wanted to keep going. From the beta customers who believed in us. From the mentors who invested their time in us.

And worst of all — I had put my family through hell. 👨👩👧👧👴👴👵

My wife. My two daughters. My father. My father-in-law. My mother-in-law. All of them carrying stress and worry they didn't sign up for.

Months without salary. Loan EMIs unpaid. All because I was chasing a dream that crashed into a wall.

The guilt was everywhere. 💔

Guilty toward my team. Guilty toward my co-founder. Guilty toward the mentors. Guilty toward my family.

And the heaviest guilt of all?

I knew, when I walked away, that I was walking away from entrepreneurship forever.

This wasn't a pause. This was a funeral. ⚰️

By Q3 2018, I finally buried the entrepreneur version of myself. And what followed was darkness.

📌 The Realization: Why I Failed Twice

Somewhere in early 2019, the pieces finally connected. 🧩

I failed my first entrepreneurship attempt. Then I failed my second. Both times, I blamed external factors — market timing, investor mood, bad luck.

But the truth was simpler and more painful.

Both times, me and my co-founders were Techno Functional. Nobody focused on Business Function.

We could build products. But we couldn't market them. We couldn't sell them. We couldn't price them. We couldn't project revenue or manage cashflow. We didn't even know what questions investors would ask.

We brought a knife to a gunfight. A really well-engineered knife — but still a knife. 🔪

The dot connects: It took me years to learn what that one investor taught us in five minutes. Business Function isn't optional. It's the oxygen. Techno Function is important — but without Business Function, even the best product suffocates.

Costly lesson. Learned late. Connected even later.

📌 The Darkness: Fighting Myself

I got a job in Bangalore in Q4 2018. Business Product Owner at a company run by a kind founder named JJ. 🙏

They gave me freedom. They gave me empowerment. And I was genuinely grateful.

But here's the thing about tasting entrepreneurship — no job feels quite the same after. Even with all the freedom and power they offered, something inside me knew it wasn't the same as building your own thing from scratch.

I don't say this to pinpoint anyone or diminish what they gave me. They were generous. It's just... the entrepreneurship bug doesn't die easy.

And Bangalore meant being away from my family in Madurai. During my stint there — across two companies — I developed a ritual. Almost every Friday night, I would travel to Madurai. Wait for hours to catch the bus. Endure the exhausting overnight journey. Spend the weekend with my family. Then return to Bangalore early Monday morning. 🚌

Taxing? Absolutely. But those couple of days with my wife and daughters made up for everything.

Still, inside me, a war was raging. 🥊

From Q4 2018 until April 2019, I felt like two people fighting in one body:

⚡ The Entrepreneur — who wanted to build, create, own

⚡ The Employee — who needed stability, safety, a paycheck

They were at war. Every single day.

I couldn't fully be the entrepreneur anymore — that door was closed. But I couldn't fully be the employee either — it felt like giving up.

I was stuck. Angry. Lost.

📌 The Trigger: A Movie Changes Everything

April 2019. Avengers: Endgame releases. 🎬

My family had come to visit me in Bangalore — they had a bunch of holidays that lined up with the weekend. We decided to watch the movie together.

I walked into the theater expecting entertainment. I walked out with a framework for my life.

There's a scene early in the movie. The Avengers go looking for Bruce Banner. And when they find him... he's different. 💚

He's not the anxious scientist anymore. He's not the rage monster either.

He's both. Merged. At peace.

Smart Hulk. Professor Hulk.

Banner explains it simply: "For years, I treated the Hulk like a disease. Something to cure. But then I realized — he's not a disease. He's the cure."

He spent 18 months in a gamma lab merging his mind with Hulk's body. And what came out was something new. Not Banner. Not Hulk. Something better than both. 🧬

I sat in that dark theater, with my family beside me, and something clicked.

The dot connects: I had been treating the Entrepreneur like a disease. Something I lost. Something to mourn. Something that made being an Employee feel like failure.

"Banner stopped fighting. So did I."

But what if the Entrepreneur wasn't something I lost?

What if he was something I could merge with?

📌 The Merge: Intrapreneur Is Born

That night, I made a decision. 🎯

I would stop fighting myself. I would stop mourning the Entrepreneur. I would stop resenting the Employee.

I would merge them.

The Intrapreneur was born. 🦸

What's an Intrapreneur? Simple:

⚡ I work inside a company — but I operate like I own it ⚡ My bosses become my investors — I pitch them, deliver value, earn their trust ⚡ My engineering teams become my customers — I empower them, solve their problems ⚡ My team becomes my startup — I bootstrap it, build culture, scale it

I'm not a founder on paper. But in my head? I'm the Virtual CEO of my team — first DevOps, then SRE, and more recently, QA joined the team — and yes, team, not family. That's a whole other dot.

Banner + Hulk = Smart Hulk. Entrepreneur + Employee = Intrapreneur. 💚

Same formula. Same peace.

📌 The Proof: Nick Fury of Kissflow

Fast forward to 2021. I joined Kissflow as Senior Director of DevOps & SRE.

Recently, I got promoted to Associate Vice President. And here's what our CPO Dinesh wrote in the announcement:

"Congrats, Swami, the Nick Fury of Kissflow, on a truly well-deserved promotion! I asked him to make DevOps invisible — a silent engine that powers everything without disrupting the flow of engineering. Within the first couple of years, he turned that vision into reality. The shift from chaos to a seamless flow was not accidental; it was built brick by brick by someone deeply determined and committed. A true leader is someone who absorbs challenges but still presents a calm, confident front to peers and colleagues. That's Swami — our Nick Fury — always in control, always prepared, always leading from the front."

I never told Dinesh about the Intrapreneur identity. I never explained the Smart Hulk framework. I never shared the 2015 failure or the months of inner war.

But he saw it. Through my actions. Through the culture I built. Through the results. 🔥

The dot connects: Fadell says "become someone completely new." But maybe that's not the only path. Maybe you don't have to kill the old you. Maybe you can merge the old you with the new you — and become something neither could be alone.

🎯 The Debrief

⚡ Failure isn't always a funeral — sometimes it's a fusion reactor

⚡ Techno Functional alone isn't enough — Business Function is the oxygen

⚡ The identities fighting inside you might be partners, not enemies

⚡ You don't have to delete the old version — you can merge it

⚡ Intrapreneur = Entrepreneur agility & brain + Employee stability

⚡ The proof isn't in what you say — it's in what people see

Banner fought the Hulk for years. Tried to cure him. Suppress him. Eliminate him.

Then he stopped fighting. And became whole. 💚

I fought the Entrepreneur for years. Mourned him. Resented the Employee who replaced him.

Then I watched Endgame — with my family beside me in a Bangalore theater.

And became whole.

Sometimes the movie that saves you isn't the one you expect.

Class dismissed. ✊

This is the visual companion to my written deep-dive on Why I Chose Super Villain Over Hero. Seven lessons. Seven visual stories. No reading required — just swipe and absorb.

Let me show you. 🎯

📌 The Visual Mission

Back when I wrote about choosing the Super Villain path over the Hero playbook, I realized something.

Words land different than visuals.

Some people read. Some people watch. Some people need to feel the story frame by frame.

So I turned those seven leadership lessons into comic-style carousels. Same confusions. Same twists. Different medium.

Think of this as the Director's Cut — literally. 🎬

Part 1: The Foundation

#1 ABSORB, DON'T CLONE

"I don't want you to be my clone. I want you to be YOU."

The first lesson Sam Prasad drilled into me. Not imitation — transformation. Take what works, leave what doesn't, and build something that's unmistakably yours.

#2 Cage the Advice Monster

The hardest skill isn't giving advice. It's holding it back.

Every leader has an advice monster inside. Mine was loud. Learning to cage it — to let others find their own path — that was the real growth.

Part 2: The Transformation

#3 Compulsion to Passion

From "I have to" to "I get to."

The shift that changed everything. When work stops being obligation and starts being obsession — not because you must, but because you can't imagine not doing it.

#4 People → Process → Tools

The order matters more than the ingredients.

Everyone wants the shiny tools. The fancy processes. But without the right people first, you're just decorating an empty building.

Part 3: The Balance

#5 Shield & Mirror

Protect externally. Reflect internally.

Two roles every leader plays. Shield your team from outside noise. But inside? Be the mirror that shows them what they need to see — even when it's uncomfortable.

#6 Team, Not Family

Why the family metaphor fails.

"We're a family" sounds warm. But families don't have performance reviews. Teams do. The distinction isn't cold — it's clarifying.

Part 4: The Release

#7 Coaching Addiction

The hardest lesson: letting go.

I was addicted to coaching. To being needed. The real growth wasn't learning to coach better — it was learning to stop. To trust them to figure it out.

🎯 The Debrief

⚡ Seven lessons. Seven visual stories. One Super Villain journey.

⚡ Some wisdom reads better. Some wisdom watches better. Now you have both.

⚡ The path from Hero to Super Villain isn't about being evil — it's about being real.

Continue the Mission

📖 Read the full written blog →

📚 Explore the full Connecting the Dots series →

This is part of the Connecting the Dots I've Collected — Comic Tales series. Leadership lessons, told frame by frame.

Class dismissed. ✊

In my last dispatch, I talked about parking trophies in the garage after you’ve earned them.

This one goes deeper. Into the person who taught me how to earn them in the first place.

Let me confuse you. 🎯

📌 The Dot: The Confusing Mentor

Indra Nooyi, in My Life in Full, writes about her mentor Roger Enrico:

“I learned a lot from Roger; he was intuitive and courageous. He took to very few people — his standards were ‘interesting,’ to say the least — but he took to me. He mentored me and, to others, that showed I was destined for bigger things. Even though Roger’s style was confusing and annoying at times, I admired him enormously and we understood each other. His savvy and friendship propelled me.”

When I read this, I didn’t think of Roger.

I thought of Sam Prasad.

The Field Reality:

No one in my career has confused me, annoyed me, and triggered my thought process more than Sam.

He was unpredictable. You couldn’t read him. For one situation, Sam would suggest a strategy — and in another similar situation, he would suggest the exact opposite. No warning. No explanation. No pattern I could decode.

And the puzzles. My God, the puzzles. 🧩

There were many times he knew the direction. He had the solution pointer. But he wouldn’t reveal it. His logic? “That will restrict your thought process to that perimeter. I want to see how you approach it yourself.”

Annoying? Absolutely.

But here’s where it gets strange.

At some point, I started getting bored when he gave me a normal task. I felt restless when he agreed with me early. I became impatient — like my learning was going to stop if he acknowledged me too soon.

I had become addicted to the confusion. 🔥

The Twist:

Most people want clarity from their mentors.

I started craving chaos — because I learned that’s where growth lives.

Sam didn’t just tolerate my confusion. He engineered it. He dropped me in the centre of the rough sea, not to punish me, but to see what I was made of.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped drowning. I started swimming.

The dot: Nooyi called Roger “confusing and annoying.” I call Sam the same. But here’s how the dot connects — the mentor who makes no sense in the moment is often the one shaping you the most.

Remember in Avengers: Endgame, when Tony Stark finally cracks time travel? For years, he resisted. Refused to help. But the puzzle wouldn’t leave him alone. He couldn’t sleep until he solved it. That’s what Sam did to me — planted puzzles that wouldn’t let me rest until I cracked them. 🛸

📌 The Dot: The QA Pilot That Changed Everything

Here’s a specific mission that explains Sam’s madness.

I was a Lead Developer at RediSolve. And to be frank — I hated QA. Thought it was beneath me. Classic Alpha Geek energy.

One fine day, Sam says: “We’re going to run a pilot QA project for a US eCommerce company. You’re leading it.”

My team?

⚡ Two developers

⚡ And a lawyer

Yes. A lawyer — who had joined for a KPO pilot.

How weird can it get?! 🤯

The Field Reality:

I had no idea what I was doing. No QA background. No interest in QA. A team that made no sense on paper.

But Sam believed I could crack it. So somewhere in me, I told myself — there must be something in me that he sees. I just have to bring it out.

Six days later, we cracked the code. ✊

That one mission made me see QA from a completely different perspective. It eventually led me to manage Dev, QA, and Systems teams — and by 2013, I pivoted fully into DevOps Transformation.

The dot connects: The career I have today traces back to a mission I didn’t want, with a team I didn’t choose, given by a man who refused to explain why.

The Twist:

Here’s what I didn’t understand then.

Sam wasn’t throwing me into chaos because he didn’t care. He was throwing me into chaos because he did care — about who I could become.

He saw capabilities in me that I didn’t see in myself. And the only way to surface them was to put me in situations where I had no choice but to discover them.

That’s the confusing mentor paradox: The person who annoyed me most shaped me most. 🎯

Like Nick Fury assembling the Avengers. He didn’t explain the full picture. He dropped heroes into situations they didn’t sign up for. Stark didn’t want to be a team player. Cap didn’t trust Fury’s methods. But Fury saw what they could become together — even when they couldn’t see it themselves. 🛡️

📌 The Dot: The Guilt I Carry

Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots forward. You can only connect them backwards.”

I lived this. Painfully.

A lot of the dots I collected with Sam only connected after he left this world in 2010. And many more connected after I left RediSolve.

I never told Sam directly what he meant to me.

Not in the past. And by 2010, the present was taken away too. There’s no future where I can.

I carry that guilt till this day. And I will carry it. 💔

The Field Reality:

Here’s what haunts me.

Every time I progress in my career — a promotion, a win, a breakthrough — there’s a moment where I think: How much would this have meant to Sam if I could give this progress to him?

Not just thank him. Show him.

Show him that the crazy missions worked. Show him that the confusion led somewhere. Show him that the seed he planted grew into something real.

But I can’t. That door closed in 2010.

The Twist:

But you know what? He wouldn’t have expected it.

For Sam, mentorship wasn’t about receiving gratitude. He saw something in me and believed that if he invested in me, I would go on to mentor others.

The dot connects: I can’t give my progress to Sam. But I can give it forward — to the people I mentor now.

And I guess I’ve done that. In all these years. And I’ll continue to do it.

That’s how I repay a debt I can never repay directly.

Remember in Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark records that message for his daughter before the final battle? He knows he might not come back. But he’s at peace — because he knows the legacy continues. Morgan will carry it. Peter will carry it. The next generation inherits what he built.

Sam didn’t get to see my message. But I’m recording it anyway — through the people I mentor. 🛸

📌 The Dot: The Gandhi in My Head

There’s a scene in Lage Raho Munna Bhai that explains this better than I can.

Murli Prasad Sharma — a lovable goon — spends five days in a library reading about Gandhi. And then something strange happens.

Gandhi starts appearing to him.

Not as a ghost. As a hallucination. A conscience keeper. A guide who shows up in moments of decision and whispers: “What would I do?”

Oogway left. Shifu carries. The Five inherit. The cycle continues.

The Field Reality:

Sam is my Gandhi.

He’s no longer here. But he shows up.

⚡ In my decisions

⚡ In my strategies

⚡ In my instincts

⚡ In the way I read people

⚡ In the way I deliberately confuse my own team to force their growth

I don’t copy him. I don’t clone him. But his influence runs deep in everything I do.

The dot: Nooyi says about Roger — “we understood each other.” I understood Sam only after he was gone. But now he lives in my head. And that understanding guides me daily.

The Twist:

Here’s the part that will confuse you. Stay with me. 🎯

In the same movie, there’s an antagonist — Lucky Singh. A villain. A bad guy.

By the end of the film, he also ends up in that same library. He immerses himself in Gandhi’s writings. And guess what?

Gandhi appears to him too.

The hero and the villain both get the imprint.

The dot connects: Gandhi doesn’t discriminate. Whoever immerses, transforms. The philosophy doesn’t care if you’re the protagonist or the antagonist — it infects whoever is willing to absorb it. 🔥

📌 The Dot: The Slow Poison Spreads

Now let me bring this home.

My team members and leads — past, present, and future — they never met Sam.

⚡ Noordeen never met Sam

⚡ Aravindhan never met Sam

⚡ Santhosh never met Sam

⚡ Akshaya never met Sam

⚡ The leads and team members who worked with me before Kissflow — they never met Sam

⚡ The ones who will work with me in the future — they will never meet Sam

But they all carry him. 🧬

The Field Reality:

Slowly, slowly. Softly, softly. Like a slow poison.

Through me.

Through the culture we’ve built. Through the rough seas I drop them into. Through the puzzles I refuse to solve for them. Through the confusion I engineer on purpose. Through the opposite strategies I give for similar situations — just like Sam did to me.

They don’t know they’re absorbing Sam’s philosophy. But they are.

And when they go on their own adventures — to other teams, other companies, other roles — they’ll pass it on further. To people who will never know Sam existed.

The Twist:

That’s the legacy of a confusing mentor.

You don’t understand them while they’re here. You resent the chaos. You question the madness. You wonder why they can’t just give you a straight answer.

But years later — sometimes decades later — you realize:

They weren’t confusing you. They were building you.

And now it’s your turn to confuse someone else.

Remember how the Avengers Initiative started? Fury had a vision no one else could see. The World Security Council thought he was reckless. Even Coulson had doubts. But Fury kept planting seeds — in Stark, in Rogers, in Romanoff — knowing that one day, those seeds would save the world.

Sam was my Fury. I didn’t understand his methods. I questioned his madness. But he kept planting seeds in me — knowing that one day, I would plant them in others.

The dots connect:

Fury → Avengers → Next Generation.

Sam → Me → My Team → Their Teams → Infinity. 🛸

🎯 The Debrief

⚡ The mentor who confused you most shaped you most

⚡ Dots connect backwards, never forward — accept this

⚡ The guilt of unsaid thanks becomes fuel for paying it forward

⚡ Legacy doesn’t need the source to survive — it travels through carriers

⚡ Your job now: be someone else’s confusing mentor

⚡ Slow poison spreads across people, generations, and destinations

Sam Prasad left this world in 2010. But his philosophy spreads — slowly, slowly, softly, softly — through people who never knew his name.

I couldn’t give my progress to Sam. So I give it forward. That’s the only receipt he would have accepted anyway.

Class dismissed. ✊

In the last dispatch, I talked about passing Sam’s philosophy forward — hoped, not enforced.

But here’s the thing about passing something forward: you have to receive it first. And sometimes, receiving means getting hit in the face with a truth you didn’t want to see.

This one comes from Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s Path — a book I’ve revisited more times than I can count. Every time, different dots light up.

This time, one hit different. Because it described someone I used to be.

Let me confuse you. 🎯

📌 The Dot: The Alpha Geek in the Mirror

“The alpha geek is driven to be the best engineer on the team, to always have the right answer, and to be the person who solves all the hard problems. The alpha geek values intelligence and technical skill above all other traits… She tends to undermine the people who work for her by belittling their mistakes and, at her worst, redoing the work of her teammates without warning. Sometimes the alpha geek will take credit for all of the work that a team does rather than acknowledging the strength of the team members.”

— Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path

The Setup:

When I first read this, I felt seen. Not in a good way.

I was that guy.

Early in my career, I played a huge role in implementing complex projects. And I made sure everyone knew it. Even when I had a team, I took credit for everything. The wins were mine. The recognition was mine. The spotlight? Definitely mine.

I celebrated hard. But selfishly. Focused entirely on me.

The Story:

Looking back, I’m embarrassed. Ashamed, even. I was that jerk.

The thing about being an Alpha Geek is that you DO get recognition. People notice you. Leaders praise you. You feel validated.

But here’s what I didn’t see at the time: the recognition came from fear, not respect.

My team didn’t celebrate my wins with me — they survived them. They didn’t come to me for help because they admired my skills — they came because they were afraid of what would happen if they didn’t. Or worse, they stopped coming at all.

And that recognition? It fed the monster. Made me more arrogant. More egoistic. More convinced that I was the smartest person in every room.

Remember in The Avengers, when Stark tells Cap, “Everything special about you came out of a bottle”? That was me — so convinced of my own brilliance that I couldn’t see anyone else’s value. Couldn’t share the spotlight. Couldn’t imagine the win belonging to anyone but me. 🛸

If I hadn’t worked under Sam’s mentorship, I would have become the Alpha Jerk that nobody wants on their team — however technically brilliant I might have been.

The Twist:

Sam saw it. Of course he did.

And he gave me the weirdest advice I’ve ever received:

“Celebrate hard. Privately. Sometimes with your team, most of the time alone. Process it until you reach satisfaction. Saturation. And then — in public — you’ll automatically find the humility to credit the team and take the corner.”

Then he added something that rewired how I handle every win and loss since:

“Process celebration and sorrow as soon as you can. Don’t hold it back.”

Stay with me.

If you hold onto celebration too long, a vacuum forms. Nothing excites you anymore. Every achievement feels hollow because you’re still chasing the high from the last one.

If you hold onto sorrow too long, it eats you. Affects your health — physical and mental.

The solution? Process fully. Reach saturation. Then move on.

Confusing? Good. That’s exactly how Sam operated.

But here’s the thing — it worked. It’s worked for 15+ years.

Think about Fury in Age of Ultron. The Avengers are broken. Defeated. Scattered at Barton’s farm. And Fury shows up — not with a speech about victory, but with perspective. He’d already processed the loss. Reached his version of saturation. That’s why he could walk into that room and lift the team instead of drowning with them.

The ones who process fully are the ones who can lead through the next storm. 🛡️

The Deeper Cut:

You know what Sam told me to picture?

MS Dhoni. 2011 World Cup Final.

India wins. The stadium explodes. Players rush the field. Cameras everywhere. And Dhoni? He’s in the corner. Quiet smile. Watching his team celebrate.

He’d already processed it. Hit saturation. The corner wasn’t about being humble for the cameras — it was the natural result of having celebrated fully, privately, before the moment even arrived.

Since 2008 — after Sam’s mentoring on this — I always take the corner. Every single time.

“I did this → We did this.” “Same person. Different corner.”

Here’s my practice now: When I receive appreciation — a work anniversary note, a promotion announcement, any recognition — I read it. Then I read it again. And again. N number of times until I hit what I call the Zen Zone. That point where I no longer feel the excitement. Saturation.

These days, it takes a few minutes. Tough moments can take hours, sometimes a couple of days. But those extended periods are rare now.

And here’s the twist within the twist — let me confuse you further.

I already operate as an Intrapreneur. An entrepreneur who’s paid for his entrepreneurship. At Kissflow, I assume the role of CEO for Team DevOps, SRE, and QA. Dinesh and Suresh? My investors. The Engineering team? My customers.

In that frame, I’m already CEO. Promotions and appreciation still give the high — I’m human. But as an Intrapreneur, I take the corner again after dedicating the progress to the team.

Because here’s the truth: I can’t be the coach if there’s no team.

It’s like Cap at the end of Endgame. He’d done the work. Fought the fights. Earned every bit of recognition the universe could offer. But when it was time? He passed the shield to Sam Wilson and took the corner — literally disappeared into a quiet life he’d processed and chosen for himself. The crown went in the garage. He picked up a different life. 🛸

That’s the model.

The crown goes in the garage. I pick up the next challenge. And we go again.

🎯 The Debrief

⚡ Process fully — celebration AND sorrow. Don’t hold either. Reach saturation, then release.

⚡ Take the Dhoni corner — public humility is the natural result of private processing, not performance.

⚡ The crown goes in the garage — you earned it, but it’s not what you lead with.

From Alpha Geek to the corner. That’s the journey.

And yes — I tell my team these Sam stories infinite times. To a point where they’ve heard more than enough. But that’s the job, right? Shamelessly brand the philosophy until it sticks.

I don’t wait for them to connect the dots. I just make sure they collect them.

Class dismissed. ✊

We’re back in the archives.

Same source as before. Carlo Ancelotti. Quiet Leadership.

A week ago, I showed you the Super Villain’s two modes — loud and quiet. The lightning rod and the deliberate restraint.

But here’s what I didn’t tell you: sometimes the quietest thing a leader can do is get out of the way entirely.

Let me confuse you. 🎯

📌 The Dot: Culture From the Dressing Room

Ancelotti shares a story about John Terry and Didier Drogba:

“John Terry was standing there telling Drogba why a particular type of behaviour was unacceptable and that is not how we did things at Chelsea.”

Then drops this:

“Cultural education can often come better from workmates rather than the boss. This is a really important lesson about building a strong dressing room.”

Read that again. Cultural education from workmates — not the boss.

The Field Reality:

Let me set the scene.

One of my SRE team members — let’s call him Peter Parker 🕷️ (protecting the kid’s identity here) — was on ROTA duty that week. As the ROTA person, he’s the first responder. When production incidents hit, he plays Incident Commander. That’s the deal.

Peter had a function outstation. That’s fine. Life happens.

But here’s the thing about ROTA ownership:

If you won’t be available during your ROTA week — including weekends — you have two options:

⚡ Option A: Delegate that ROTA duty to someone for the specific dates you won’t be available — and ensure they explicitly accept the handover

⚡ Option B: Reschedule your ROTA to a different week when you WILL be available — by negotiating with the team in advance

Peter did neither. He informed others he’d be away and expected them to cover. No explicit handover. No confirmed ownership transfer. No rescheduling.

That weekend? A production incident happened. The Incident Commander was missing.

Now here’s where the story gets real:

Aravindhan and another SRE were attending a colleague’s sister’s marriage that same weekend. They weren’t on ROTA that week.

Now, when a production incident hits, every priority comes down — even personal ones. Production incident becomes top priority for everyone. That’s non-negotiable.

But here’s the thing: the ROTA person is the first responder. The Incident Commander. He does the first-hand assessment. He pulls in the required Engineers, DevOps, and SRE to the war room based on that assessment.

That’s Peter’s job. Peter wasn’t there.

So Aravindhan — from the wedding venue — had to step up as first responder. A role that wasn’t his that week.

The person not on ROTA became the Incident Commander. The person on ROTA was missing.

That’s when the Google Chat thread lit up. 11:02 AM.

Aravindhan stepped in. Direct. Clear. No meeting needed.

“Informing is different from delegating.”

He continued:

“You cannot expect others to take ownership for YOUR ROTA delegation. The ROTA person is the first responder. If you’re unavailable, you don’t just inform — you ensure coverage is OWNED by someone, confirmed, and handed over properly. Or you reschedule your ROTA week by negotiating with the team.”

Peter pushed back, trying to explain his side.

Aravindhan held firm — but watch how he delivered it with belonging cues:

“I think me and others didn’t have clear understanding of your situation… We could have discussed better. But the principle stands: ROTA ownership cannot be abandoned.”

That’s Netflix 4A Feedback in action:
⚡ Aim to Assist — Not attacking Peter, helping him see the gap
⚡ Actionable — Clear options: delegate properly OR reschedule
⚡ Appreciate — Left room for Peter to respond
⚡ Accept or Discard — Peter’s choice what to do with it

And here’s the belonging cue that matters: Aravindhan took partial ownership too. “We could have discussed better.” He didn’t just point the finger. He held the mirror to the whole system. That’s how you give hard feedback without breaking the person.

Peter acknowledged: “Will make sure this is not repeated. Thanks.”

Then Noordeen did something powerful. He took a personal correction and expanded it into team-wide cultural education:

“This is not only for Peter.”

“When you’re on ROTA, you’re the Incident Commander. That’s not a title — that’s a responsibility. If something comes up, you have two choices: delegate with explicit handover, or reschedule your ROTA week in advance. You don’t just inform and disappear. You don’t leave your responsibilities hanging unattended.”

“@all — Let’s practice these things as well.”

11:33 AM. Done.

31 minutes. In chat. Resolved. Team learned.

At some point, Aravindhan asked Peter to reach out to him, Deepika, Noordeen, and me if he needed clarification on the feedback.

My contribution? One message:

“I guess you, Deepika and Noordeen are already a handful 🙂”

Translation: They’ve got this. I’m not needed here.

The Twist:

If I had jumped in with my Advice Monster 🐲 — the one Noordeen and Aravindhan have named — here’s what would have happened:

⚡ Multiple meetings easily spanning 3–6 hours overall

⚡ Continuous messaging for days

⚡ Peter gets defensive

⚡ Team tunes out

But when peers correct peers — peers who stepped up from a wedding to play a role that wasn’t theirs — with 4A Feedback and belonging cues? Different energy entirely.

The correction carried weight because they had earned the right to give it. They walked the talk. Then they talked.

Aravindhan and Noordeen aren’t just Tech Leads. They’re Dressing Room Leaders. Like John Terry telling Drogba how things work at Chelsea.

I’m building a dressing room. And the best sign of progress? Culture gets enforced when I’m not even in the room.

Remember in Avengers: Endgame when Tony Stark and Steve Rogers finally reconcile and start working together without Fury’s intervention? That’s dressing room culture. The team aligned itself. Fury didn’t need to be there. 🛡️

The best culture works when you’re not in the room.

📌 The Dot: Trust is Prepaid

Ancelotti on building teams:

“Working with these athletes, taking care of them and helping them develop and grow, building trust and loyalty…”

Trust. The word every leader throws around. But how do you actually build it?

The Field Reality:

Think of Monopoly. 🎲

Every player starts with money before they’ve done anything. Before they’ve bought properties. Before they’ve proven they can play.

That money is prepaid trust.

Sam Prasad taught me this. He’d throw me into missions:

⚡ Before I was ready

⚡ Before I knew it was coming

⚡ Outside my job description

“Isn’t that Admin’s job?” I’d ask.

He’d just look at me. Do it anyway.

That QA adventure — leading a team with 2 developers and 1 lawyer to build quality processes — I had no business being there. But Sam dropped me in the middle of the rough sea and believed I’d swim.

That’s prepaid trust.

The Twist:

But here’s the guardrail. Trust is prepaid, not a blank check.

Netflix calls it Freedom and Responsibility. You get the freedom upfront. But if that freedom isn’t handled with adequate responsibility — or worse, abused — additional controls come in.

The equation:

⚡ Prepaid trust + Responsibility = Growth

⚡ Prepaid trust + Abuse = Controls reinstated

When delegation fails? Learn from it. What went wrong? What went well? Recalibrate. Then:

• Continue same mission (adjusted)

• Pivot to different mission

• Drop mission altogether

The constant? Loads of learning. Always.

Think about how Fury handed the Tesseract project to different people over the years. Some earned more trust. Some got their access revoked. But he always started by giving them the mission first — prepaid trust with accountability built in. 🛸

📌 The Dot: Managing Support Staff

Ancelotti writes about his coaching staff:

“My priority is to make sure they can operate in the way that suits them best, that they are valued and respected and that they have the opportunity to develop as coaches.”

Not micromanaged. Enabled.

The Field Reality:

Here’s my system with my Tech Leads:

Daily: Sync on strategies, execution, progress, challenges. Alignment layer.

Zephyr 3.0 1–1s: They bring 5 questions. They pick 3 for deep discussion. 2 for quick touchpoints.

The questions:

1. Performance: What’s going well? What’s challenging?

2. Peer Relationships: How’s collaboration across teams?

3. Leadership: Where are you showing ownership?

4. Innovation: What are you learning? How can we work better?

5. Your Topics: What’s on your mind?

They decide which three. Their agency. Their growth.

And in those sessions? I confuse them. On purpose. 🎯

Classic Thanos soul in Nick Fury personality. 😈

I give them my point of views — sometimes contradictory, sometimes incomplete — and let them wrestle with the confusion until they find their own clarity.

The Twist:

Here’s the Captain Paradox that I inject into their development:

Wrong: Captain stops scoring, only leads Also Wrong: Captain only scores, doesn’t develop team

Right: Captain leads AND scores when situation demands

Like a great forward who becomes captain — you can’t stop scoring just because you’re leading now. You ensure the team scores. AND you score when needed.

Better version as leader. Better version as individual player. Both.

This is what I took from Post 4: “I don’t want you to be my clone. But I want you to join my club of people with the same mental disorders.” 🧠

It’s like Steve Rogers passing the shield to Sam Wilson in Endgame. He didn’t just make Sam a symbol-carrier. Sam had to become both the leader AND the fighter. Captain America doesn’t stop throwing the shield just because he’s leading the Avengers. 🛡️

📌 The Dot: Adapt, Learn, Never Stand Still

Ancelotti insists:

“Leaders cannot afford to stand still, they must always be developing, progressing.”

And:

“A culture of improvement is essential to success.”

The Field Reality:

Whatever I practice, I got inspired by something, absorbed it, and implemented it my way.

That’s what Sam asked me to do. That’s what I’m doing now.

But here’s the thing — you can’t read a book and copy-paste it tomorrow.

The process:

🍳 Marinate — Let it sit

🍳 Customize — Adapt the recipe

🍳 Cook — Implement in your style

🍳 Serve — Deliver to the team

Some dishes? Team doesn’t like it at first. Over time, they get used to it. Then they start liking it.

Some dishes? Complete disaster. 💀

The Twist:

Here’s my disaster story:

2018: I heavily recommended books. Team downloaded pirated copies. Never read.

Kissflow v1: I enforced buying the book. They bought it. Never read.

Realization: They can’t connect the dots from the material that I connected.

Recalibrate: Stopped generic recommendations.

Comeback: Now we have ITH sessions. Materials are picked based on where the team is right now. Strategic. Contextual.

Right now, after taking over QA, with DevOps and SRE in the last miles of rebuilding — we’re reading No Rules Rules together.

You know villains do more comebacks than heroes, right? 🦹‍♂️

Tony Stark went from weapons dealer to dying in a cave to building the suit to sacrificing himself for the universe. Multiple disasters. Multiple comebacks. Each version of the suit was better because the last one failed. That’s the adaptation loop. 🔧

📌 The Dot: Change Can Be Liberating

Ancelotti writes:

“You don’t always need what you think you want. Change can be liberating; don’t resist it just for the sake of it.”

The Field Reality:

With Sam Prasad, impossible missions happened a zillion times.

Every time he dropped me in the middle of the sea, I was hesitant. Doubtful.

But I found it liberating. Every. Single. Time.

That QA adventure? Classic Sam Prasad move.

Here’s the thing I just realized while writing this: I never actually resisted his crazy strategies.

Hesitation? Yes. Doubt? Yes. Resistance? Never.

Why?

The Twist:

At one point, I started getting worried if Sam agreed with me immediately.

“Wait — if he’s agreeing, am I missing the learning?”

That’s when I realized I had become Ethan Hunt. 🎬

Impossible missions became the addiction. The challenges, the obstacles, the nightmares — they came with something selfish:

Learning something new and interesting.

I went from:

⚡ Hesitant when thrown in the sea

⚡ To never resisting

⚡ To worrying when there WAS no sea

⚡ To actively seeking the storm

That’s the origin of the addiction I confessed in Post 4: “Coaching is an addiction. I don’t want rehab.”

It started with being coached. By Sam. Through impossible missions.

Now I’m on the other side. Deploying my own team into their impossible missions. Watching them go from hesitant to addicted.

Ethan Hunt became Nick Fury. 🛸

Remember when Thor lost Mjolnir, lost his eye, lost Asgard — and became stronger? Ragnarok wasn’t about what he lost. It was about discovering he never needed the hammer to be the God of Thunder. Every impossible loss was liberation. ⚡

🎯 The Debrief

Ancelotti showed me that culture isn’t built by announcements. It’s built in the dressing room.

Here’s the operating system:

⚡ Culture from workmates, not just the boss — Dressing Room Leaders enforce it when you’re not even there

⚡ Trust is prepaid, not earned — Like Monopoly starting money; give it first, add controls if abused

⚡ Confuse them to seek clarity — Thanos soul, Fury personality; point of views over answers

⚡ Captain Paradox — Better leader AND better individual player; both, not either

⚡ Marinate, customize, cook, serve — Adaptation takes time; some dishes fail, villains come back

⚡ Worry when it’s too easy — The learning is in the impossible mission; become Ethan Hunt

⚡ Hesitation ≠ Resistance — Doubt the mission, but dive in anyway

The sea is still rough. The Super Villain is still loud when needed.

But the best sign of a culture working? It doesn’t wait for permission. It happens when you’re not even in the room.

Build the dressing room. Let them enforce it. Get out of the way.

Stay quiet. Stay loud. Stay addicted. 🦹‍♂️⚡

Class dismissed. ✊

We’re back with another file from the archives.

Still connecting dots from Carlo Ancelotti’s Quiet Leadership. The man keeps delivering intel.

This time, it’s about how culture is BUILT — not announced, not imposed, but infused. Slowly. Day by day.

There’s this thing leaders love to do. They join a new team, call an all-hands meeting, and announce the “new culture.” As if culture is a PowerPoint slide you can project onto a wall.

It doesn’t work that way. Ancelotti knows it:

“The players needed to understand, as those at Milan had done, that they were part of a great club — but I had to begin this process slowly, slowly, softly, softly.”

Slowly, slowly. Softly, softly.

Let me confuse you with how I do this. 🎯

📌 The Dot: Slowly, Slowly, Softly, Softly

Ancelotti on culture building:

“I spoke with the players about what we would do and, day by day, we began to improve the culture of the club.”

“We didn’t impose any of this. We just organized things for the players and made it welcoming for them to stay, so that they would want to stay.”

Day by day. No imposition. Make it welcoming.

Sounds nice. But what does it actually look like in practice?

The Field Reality:

I call it culture as slow poison. 🧪

You don’t force it. You infuse it. Day by day. Drip by drip. Until it’s in their blood.

Here’s my playbook:

📚 ITH Sessions (IT’s HOT): We read books together. Watch leadership and team movies. Documentaries. And I MANDATE them to speak.

Here’s the blackmail: “If the session is interactive, we close on time. If not, we go extended.”

First few times, the team thinks I’m joking. “He won’t really keep us late, right?”

Then marathon sessions happen. Weekend sessions happen.

They realize: “Oh. He IS the Super Villain. He IS crazy.” 🦹‍♂️

🌀 Zephyr 1–1s: Part of the slow poisoning playbook. Regular, structured, agenda belongs to them. Every conversation is a drip of culture.

🎤 Quarterly AMA Sessions: Ask Me Anything. Or as I like to call it — Attack Me with Anything.

Here’s what surprised me: Questions that NEVER came up in 1–1s came up in AMAs.

Why? Even though they feel safe with me one-on-one, sometimes they need the support of numbers. Seeing teammates who feel the same gives them courage to ask the tough questions.

🎬 Netflix “Freedom and Responsibility”: The cultural model that aligns with Kissflow’s values. The bedrock of everything we build.

The Twist:

Over a period of time, through these cultural drills, I make the team a gang of people with the same mental disorder.💀

That’s not an accident. That’s slow poison working.

Think about how Fury built SHIELD. He didn’t announce the culture in a memo. He recruited people one by one. Trained them. Tested them. Let the culture seep into them through missions and mentorship. By the time the Avengers assembled, they already FELT like a team — even though they’d never worked together.

You can’t announce culture. You can’t impose culture. You can only infuse it — session by session, conversation by conversation, until it becomes who they are. 🛡️

📌 The Dot: Types of Leaders

Now, as you’re building culture, you need to understand something important. Not everyone leads the same way — and that’s by design.

Ancelotti identifies two types:

“Ronaldo is what I call a ‘technical leader’, who leads by example; he doesn’t speak a lot but is serious, very professional and takes care of himself.”

“Ramos is what I call a ‘personality leader’, a leader with strong character, who is never scared, never worried — always positive.”

And he says:

“Sometimes it’s the players who have to be the leaders, not the manager.”

Technical Leaders and Personality Leaders. Both essential. Both different.

The Field Reality:

I see these two types in my teams. And I keep them SEPARATE — by design. 🎯

DevOps:

🔧 Noordeen = Technical Leader (the Tony Stark — speed, systems thinking, innovation)

🌱 Aravindhan = Technical Leader (still active), now thinking about pursuing the Cultural Functional path in the future

QA:

🔧 Santhosh = Technical Leader

🎭 Akshaya = Cultural Functional Leader

Other companies might merge these two leadership types into one role. “You’re the tech lead, so you’re also the people lead.”

I don’t do that. Here’s why:

Each type has strengths. Each type has blind spots. When you pair them, their gaps cover each other.

🔧 Technical Leader’s blind spots → Covered by Cultural Functional Leader

🎭 Cultural Functional Leader’s blind spots → Covered by Technical Leader

They complement. They balance. Like how Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were different kinds of leaders — one led through innovation and brilliance, the other through values and presence. The Avengers needed BOTH.

The Twist:

I WAS a Technical Leader. In 2018, I purposely pivoted to Cultural Functional — the coach role.

I did it while I still had my best Techie years left. Not when I was fading. Not when I had no choice.

Why? Because I saw that the team needed a coach more than another player. They had enough technical strength. They needed someone to build the culture.

Ancelotti says sometimes the players have to be the leaders. I agree. But someone has to build the environment where player-leaders can emerge.

That’s the coach’s job. That’s Fury’s job. That’s my job. 🛡️

📌 The Dot: Truth to Power

Culture isn’t just about slow poison and leader types. It’s also about what people are ALLOWED to say.

Ancelotti on Ibrahimović:

“He was never afraid to speak the truth to anyone, even me.”

And he’s clear about what leaders must do:

“Speaking truth to power has to be an acceptable behaviour. Leaders have to enable it for their own benefit. It is not a ‘nice to have’, it is essential.”

Not nice to have. Essential. If your team can’t tell you the truth, you’re flying blind.

The Field Reality:

Here’s the problem Netflix’s Reed Hastings describes in No Rules Rules:

“The higher you get in an organization, the less feedback you receive, and the more likely you are to ‘come to work naked’ or make another error that’s obvious to everyone but you.”

When the office assistant screws up a coffee order and no one tells him — no big deal.

When the CFO screws up a financial statement and no one dares challenge it — crisis.

The higher you go, the more dangerous silence becomes.

How I Enable Truth to Power:

📋 Put feedback ON the agenda — In Zephyr 1–1s, feedback isn’t optional. It’s expected. First or last item. Separate from operational talk.

🤝 Belonging cues — When they speak up, respond with gratitude. Appreciative tone. Eye contact. Thank them for courage. Show them: “You spoke truth and you still belong here.”

🎤 AMA = Attack Me with Anything — Quarterly sessions where the team can challenge me publicly. Questions come up there that never came up in 1–1s. The group gives them courage.

🚫 Make it non-negotiable — Like Hastings told his employee: “The day you find yourself sitting on your feedback because you’re worried you’ll be unpopular is the day you’ll need to leave.”

🎯 Netflix 4A Feedback System — The structured way to give and receive feedback well.

The Twist:

But here’s the confusion — when they speak up, I don’t just nod and say “thank you for your feedback.” 🤝

Sometimes I fight them aggressively — like a coach and player debating in the dressing room. ⚔️

Both are true:

✅ I make it SAFE to speak up

⚔️ But when they do, I engage, push back, debate

Why? If I just nodded at everything, they’d think I don’t care. Or worse — their opinion didn’t matter enough to fight over.

When I fight back, I’m saying:

“Your opinion matters enough for me to engage. Let’s battle it out.”

That’s respect. Dressing room style.

Think about Tony and Cap arguing in the Avengers. They fought HARD. Disagreed publicly. But that friction made them better. Fury didn’t stop those arguments — he let them happen. Because truth has to be spoken, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable. 💀

Your opinion matters enough to fight over. That’s respect.

📌 The Dot: No Ultimatums

Now let’s talk about what happens when things get really hard. When someone’s not performing. When you’re tempted to draw a line.

Ancelotti is direct:

“If you have to sack people then sack them — don’t tell them that if they lose or do a bad job you’re going to sack them. If I don’t do a good job then just fire me, but don’t give me stupid ultimatums. You are the boss, so of course you have the right to sack whoever you want — just be a man about it.”

No “do this or else.” Just make the call. Don’t threaten — act.

The Field Reality:

I don’t give up on people easily. Even when THEY give up on the system or on me.

Exit is the easiest route. Breaking is easy.

Making is not. And as a coach, I know that.

I always believe there’s something still not visible. Some blocker, some fear, some misalignment. And if we find it, we can make things instead of breaking things.

Sam Prasad’s Example:

I was a jerk. Immature. Problematic. The kind of employee most managers would cut loose.

Sam took 3–4 YEARS before I started realizing my stupidity and aligning with him.

One day I asked him: “Why did you spend that much time on me? You could’ve sent me out and found someone more seasoned and expert.”

His answer:

“Sometimes, as a leader, there’s an intuition that says — if this problematic person is aligned, he’ll take the team and himself to places. And as a leader, sometimes you have to take that call.”

He bet on the problematic person. That bet was me. 💀

The Reality:

Have I fired people? Yes. It’s never comfortable — even when they don’t want to bounce back.

Sometimes when I want to make, THEY break with me. It stings. But I understand — that happens.

When breaking happens:

🤝 Shake hands

🙏 Wish them well

🤝 Offer to help in the future

The Twist:

This might seem like it deviates from my Super Villain character. Villains are supposed to be ruthless, right?

But here’s the thing:

“You can’t box Super Villains with any perimeter or rules. They do what they want to do because they want to do it that way.”

The Super Villain fights for his people. That’s not weakness. That’s the villain’s code.

Fury could have given up on Stark. On Banner. On Romanoff. They were all problematic. Complicated. Risky bets.

He didn’t. He kept making, not breaking. And look what they built together. 🦹‍♂️

📌 The Dot: Unselfish Leaders

Finally, let’s talk about what separates good leaders from great ones.

Ancelotti on Ibrahimović:

“Ibra is one of the few strikers, maybe the only one, who is just as happy when he makes an assist as he is when he scores.”

“He is one of the most unselfish players I have ever met, which is of massive value to the team.”

Just as happy with an assist as a goal. That’s rare. Most strikers live for the glory of scoring. Ibra lives for the WIN — regardless of who gets the credit.

The Field Reality:

Sam Prasad taught me this. And I later saw MS Dhoni practice it perfectly. 🏏

The Dhoni Model:

🏆 When team WINS → Dhoni credits the team. Hands over the cup in microseconds. Stays in the corner so the team takes the limelight.

🔥 When team LOSES → Takes responsibility. Faces the heat. Doesn’t throw players under the bus.

Sam told me:

“If you score while the team loses, you might have fame for the score — but you lost as a leader. Put the team first.”

The Dancer Story:

I was a dancer once. Years back, I FAILED in a competition. It stung. I moved on.

Later, I choreographed a team of girls. They entered the SAME competition.

They won. 🏆

That high — when your team scores on games YOU lost in the past. That’s the ultimate assist.

I didn’t need to be on stage. I put THEM there. And their victory felt bigger than any I could have won myself.

The Twist:

If you ask me who’s my Ibrahimović — all my bosses, fellow leaders, and coaches have been unselfish. Regardless of which field they’re from.

They celebrated assists over goals. They put team first. They stayed in the corner when the team won.

That’s the model I absorbed. That’s the model I practice.

Think about Fury at the end of the first Avengers movie. Who gets the credit? The Avengers. Who’s in the shadows? Fury. He built the whole thing, and he’s content to let them take the spotlight.

The best leaders don’t need the spotlight. They create it — for others. 🔦

🎯 The Debrief

Culture isn’t announced. It’s infused. Slowly, slowly. Softly, softly.

Here’s the operating system:

🧪 Culture as slow poison — ITH, Zephyr, AMA, Netflix F&R — until they become a gang with the same mental disorder

🔧🎭 Two types of leaders — Technical and Cultural Functional — keep them separate, let them cover each other’s gaps. Tony and Cap energy.

🗣️ Truth to power is essential, not nice-to-have — put feedback on the agenda, give belonging cues, make it expected

⚔️ But also fight them in the dressing room — if you just nod, they think you don’t care

🛠️ Making over Breaking — don’t give up easily. Sam spent 3–4 years on me. Fury didn’t give up on the Avengers.

💡 Intuition: “If this problematic person aligns, he’ll take the team to places”

🦹‍♂️ Super Villains can’t be boxed — they fight for their people their own way

🏏 Unselfish leaders celebrate assists over goals — Dhoni model, dancer story, Fury in the shadows

🔦 The best leaders don’t need the spotlight — they create it for others

Culture is slow. Leadership is patient. And the best goals are the ones you set up for someone else to score.

Stay slow. Stay unselfish. Stay poisonous. 🧪⚡

Class dismissed. ✊

We’re back with another file from the archives.

Still connecting dots from Carlo Ancelotti’s Quiet Leadership. The man keeps delivering intel.

This time, it’s about what happens AFTER you step up. The shadow you cast. The eyes on you. The cycles that end.

Ancelotti says:

“OK, there’s always a first time, and now is the right time to be the first one.”

That sounds inspiring on paper. But what does it actually feel like when someone THROWS you into being “the first one” — before you think you’re ready?

Let me confuse you with how I learned that lesson. 🎯

📌 The Dot: Taking Your Chance

Ancelotti says:

“You have to wait for your chance and then take it. And, when you do take it, you have to know that you will always be challenged.”

“There is no room for complacency at a big club and it is important for the players to know that, if they do well when they get the chance, they will get their opportunity in the team.”

Wait for your chance. Take it. Get challenged. No complacency.

Sounds straightforward. But what if you’re not waiting for the chance — what if someone THROWS you into it before you even see it coming?

The Field Reality:

Let me bring Sam Prasad again. 🎯

At RediSolve, Sam had a habit that drove me crazy. He’d ask me why I didn’t do certain things — things I thought I should only do when told. This wasn’t about my regular tasks. It was about leading team members and grabbing cross-team opportunities that I thought were clearly outside my R&R.

I always got perplexed when he threw me in. And sometimes it got downright weird.

💀 The ISP Call: One day, the office internet went down. After a few minutes, Sam called me and asked if I’d checked with the ISP. When was the line coming back?

I was thinking: “Isn’t that the Admin’s job?”

But I did it anyway. Confused.

💀 The CEO-to-CEO Call: Sam was on leave. He asked ME — a Lead Engineer — to speak to the customer CEO on his behalf.

I was thinking: “How can I speak on behalf of the CEO to another CEO?”

But I did it anyway. Confused.

💀 The QA Pilot: Here’s the weirdest one. I was a Developer. And like most developers, I HATED QA.

One day, Sam said we were running a pilot QA project for a US eCommerce company. My team? Two developers and a lawyer who had joined for a KPO pilot but was free at that time.

Two devs and a lawyer running a QA pilot. How weird can it get? 🤷

But that incident changed my perspective on QA entirely. It eventually led me to manage Dev, QA, AND Systems — and pivot to DevOps Transformation in 2013.

💀 The Indian eCommerce Site: We had to build the Indian version of a famous US eCommerce site. In the US, that site was run by 60+ engineers across various positions and 500 on-prem servers.

Our team? Me and one J2EE Engineer. 50 servers.

Sam believed we could deliver it when WE thought he was crazy.

And we delivered. 🚀

The Twist:

One day, I asked Sam: “Why do you keep pushing me into zones outside my R&R?”

His answer:

“You shouldn’t wait for someone to tell you what to do. Do whatever you can for the team and company to keep things moving.”

That’s the Rough Sea philosophy again. He threw me in. Waited on the shore. Watched me swim.

Ancelotti says “wait for your chance and take it.”

Sam’s version? Your chance is NOW. You just don’t know it yet. So I’ll throw you in.

Think about Nick Fury. He didn’t wait for Tony Stark to volunteer for the Avengers Initiative. He showed up at Tony’s house uninvited. He didn’t wait for Steve Rogers to feel ready — he put him in the field. Fury’s entire playbook is throwing people into chances they didn’t know they were ready for. 🛡️

That was Sam Prasad for me. My original Fury. 💀

📌 The Dot: The Shadow You Cast

Now that you’ve stepped up, there’s something nobody warns you about.

Ancelotti puts it plainly:

“The transition from member of staff to leader is not as straightforward as you think. You have to understand that, no matter how insignificant you think your actions and words are, to your staff you cast a shadow over most aspects of their lives.”

“Take that responsibility seriously; take care of people and don’t abuse your power.”

Your words carry weight. Your actions land harder than you think. You cast a shadow.

Heavy stuff. How do you carry it without letting it crush you?

The Field Reality:

Honestly? As a Super Villain, I don’t spend my nights worrying about how my feedback landed. 🦹‍♂️

If they’re upset with me or confused — they come to me and get it sorted. That’s the deal.

That’s where Netflix 4A Feedback comes into play:

🎯 Aim to Assist — Feedback should help, not hurt

🔧 Actionable — Give something they can act on

🙏 Appreciate — Receive with gratitude (even if it stings)

✅ Accept or Discard — You decide what to do with it

And Zephyr 1–1s — my regular one-on-one sessions where the agenda belongs to THEM.

Sometimes in Zephyr, after hesitation, they bring up something I said weeks or months ago that’s still bothering them.

I address it. But then I ask them:

“If we cancelled this Zephyr today due to some reason, when would you have asked me this?”

Silence. 💀

The Formula:

Right Info → Right People → Right Time

If ANY one of these three is missed, it’s ineffective. Most cases go down the drain.

Don’t sit on your confusion. Don’t let my shadow haunt you in silence. Bring it to me.

The Flip Side — Praise:

But here’s where the shadow works FOR the team.

I follow Bill Campbell’s method: Shamelessly praise them to stakeholders and other teams. Big wins. Small wins. Doesn’t matter.

“If I’m not going to shamelessly promote my team, who’s gonna do it for us?”

The Twist:

Yes, you cast a shadow. But that shadow doesn’t have to be darkness.

Think about Fury on the Helicarrier during the Battle of New York. He’s watching screens. Giving orders. But he’s not micromanaging every move. He’s cast a shadow over that entire operation — and that shadow is PROTECTION, not oppression.

⚡ Create systems (Zephyr, 4A) so they can surface issues

⚡ Challenge them to own their side — don’t wait, speak up

⚡ Use the shadow for GOOD — shameless external praise

Shadow isn’t a burden to carry. It’s a tool to wield. 🛡️

📌 The Dot: Solutions Over Blame

Once you’re in the seat, everyone’s watching. And when things go wrong — and they WILL go wrong — you have a choice.

Ancelotti’s preference:

“My preference is to find a solution, not to look for the guilty to blame.”

“Do your job to the best of your ability and let others judge you because they will anyway.”

Find the fix. Skip the blame game. Let the work speak.

The Field Reality:

When you’re appointed as a coach, everyone’s watching. Management. Fans. Players. All eyes on you.

Now imagine managing crisis management teams — DevOps, SRE, QA.

When production goes down, it’s not just your team watching. Management watches. Customers watch. Customer Success and TAM teams watch. Everyone’s waiting to see how you handle the chaos.

I jokingly tell my team:

“The best way to get introduced is during production incidents — when almost the entire company comes to you. While you address the incident, use that moment to introduce yourself and build rapport!” 💀

Turn the crisis into connection. While you’re fixing the fire, shake some hands.

All eyes on us! We’ve got this! And we’re making friends while we fix it!

The Super Villain Move:

I poke my customers — the Engineering Team — with my crazy methods. How I run DevOps, SRE, QA.

They watch. They doubt. They wait.

Then the team delivers.

And they become our silent, ardent supporters. 🤫

Dinesh Varadharajan’s Brief (My Boss at Kissflow):

When I joined, he gave me a clear mandate:

“I want DevOps to be silent. Engineering shouldn’t feel the dependency on DevOps, but should get what they want from DevOps.”

That became my motto: “Empower Team Engineering”

Now I’m taking up the same challenge with QA.

The Twist:

All eyes are on you. Let them watch. Let them judge.

Remember what Fury says? “I still believe in heroes.” He says it AFTER everything goes wrong. After the Avengers fall apart. After the world doubts.

He doesn’t waste time finding who to blame. He focuses on the solution. The next move.

⚡ Go to gemba regularly — where the work happens

⚡ Trust the process

⚡ Trust the PPT — People → Process → Tools

Magic will happen. It always does when you stop worrying about the watchers and start focusing on the work. 🏭

📌 The Dot: Cycles & Moving On

Here’s the part nobody likes to talk about. The endings.

Ancelotti on cycles:

“Sometimes a relationship just gets tired and it’s time to move on. Don’t over internalize this, everything has a cycle. The key is to be as productive as possible in each cycle.”

Everything has a cycle. Don’t over internalize. Stay productive.

Easy to say. Harder to live.

The Field Reality:

In the beginning, this was tough for me. Watching people leave. Feeling like I failed them somehow.

Now? I’m okay with it. It’s part of the game.

In a football club, players leave for other clubs. They get traded. You wave them goodbye. It happens fast — sometimes you don’t even have time to process before the next match.

Same goes for coaches.

Most of the time, I don’t know when a cycle is ending. But when it happens:

⚡ I try to reverse it if possible — is there something we can fix?

⚡ If they want to leave, I respect their decision

⚡ I do what’s best for THEM

⚡ While making sure TEAM and COMPANY interests are protected

The Twist:

Parting is tough. Even though it’s part of the game.

I don’t pretend it’s easy. I just accept it’s the job.

We talked about the Avengers Initiative in a previous post — when they leave, they spread the legacy to places you’ll never go.

Think about it. Tony mentored Peter. Cap handed the shield to Sam. Fury built something that outlasted his direct involvement.

That’s the reframe that helps:

🚫 You’re not losing them

✅ You’re deploying them

The cycle ends. A new mission begins. For them and for you.

Like Fury says: “There was an idea… to bring together a group of remarkable people.” That idea doesn’t die when one person leaves. It multiplies. 🔄

🎯 The Debrief

Stepping up is just the beginning. What comes AFTER is the real game.

Here’s the operating system:

⚡ Don’t wait to be told — do whatever you can to keep things moving (Sam Prasad’s lesson)

⚡ Your chance is NOW — you just don’t know it yet. Let yourself be thrown in.

⚡ You cast a shadow — make it shelter, not darkness

⚡ Create systems (Zephyr, 4A) so they can surface issues — Right Info → Right People → Right Time

⚡ Shamelessly praise them — if you won’t promote your team, who will?

⚡ Let them watch, let them judge — the work will speak

⚡ Trust the process, trust the PPT — magic happens in the gemba

⚡ Parting is tough, but it’s part of the game — accept it, don’t fight it

⚡ You’re not losing them — you’re deploying them

The chance came. You took it. Now carry it well.

And when the cycle ends? Let it go. A new mission awaits. 🔄

Stay thrown in. Stay shameless. Stay deployed. 💀⚡

Class dismissed. ✊

We’re back with another file from the archives.

Still connecting dots from Carlo Ancelotti’s Quiet Leadership. The man keeps delivering intel.

This time, it’s about the hardest move in any career — the transition from player to coach. From doing the work to leading the people who do the work.

Ancelotti doesn’t sugarcoat it:

“The problem is that when you become a manager after finishing a playing career so recently, you think that you know everything. In reality you know nothing.”

Let me confuse you with how I learned that lesson. 🎯

📌 The Dot: Being a Player Is Not Enough

Ancelotti says:

“Today, I’ve seen enough to know that you must never think that being a player is enough to be a manager. It enables you to have a relationship with the players and to understand what they need, but the other aspects of management have to be studied and learned.”

You were great at the craft. That’s why they promoted you. But the skills that made you a star player? They’re not the skills that make you a great coach.

The Field Reality:

Let me pull Sam Prasad again. 🎯

Early in my leadership journey, I was interviewing candidates for Lead Engineer. I was rejecting people left, right, and center.

What’s new in that, you might ask?

I was rejecting people who were MORE talented and more expert than me. 💀

Sam caught it. When he asked why, I opened up:

“If they’re more techie than me, how can I push them? I feel inferior.”

Sam dropped two confusions on me that day:

💀 “Swami, you have to be the dumbest person in your team. If you are, you’re leading the right team. If not, you’re not leading the right team.”

💀 “As a leader, you don’t need to know everything. And you should KNOW that you don’t need to know everything.”

Pretty confusing, right? That’s Sam for you!

The Twist:

It took a while to absorb. But today?

⚡ When it comes to Techno-Functional, I am proudly the dumbest person in Team DevOps, SRE, and QA

⚡ I made that choice in 2018 when I pivoted from Techno-Functional to Cultural-Functional

⚡ I did it while I still had my best Techie years left — not when I was fading

I transitioned from Captain to Coach by choice. Not by force.

Think about it — Nick Fury doesn’t fly the Iron Man suit. He doesn’t throw the shield. He doesn’t smash. But he built the team that does all of it. 🛡️

Being the dumbest person in the room isn’t weakness. It’s the ultimate leadership flex.

The coach who builds the team, not the player who scores!

📌 The Dot: The Fear of Speaking

Ancelotti confesses something most leaders won’t admit:

“The thing that scared me most, however, was having to put my face in front of the players and speak to them regularly.”

“When it came to speaking in front of the squad… one might be yawning, another could be ‘resting their eyes’ in the corner, while someone might be staring blankly out the window — someone might even be fast asleep. It’s really difficult, at the start, to command everyone’s attention all the time.”

The room full of people you’re supposed to lead. Half of them checked out. How do you command attention?

The Field Reality:

Honestly? This never happened to me. 🎯

Maybe because I weaponized the Super Villain card from the start. 🦹‍♂️

My method:

⚡ Trigger their ego, attention, and even hatred FIRST

⚡ Once I have their attention, drive and mentor with my crazy methods

⚡ Practice “Care Personally, Challenge Professionally” — but in Anti-Hero style

The Restart Power Move:

When someone yawns, looks at their watch, stares out the window — I don’t ignore it.

I call it out:

“You look uninterested. Maybe I’m being vague. I’m not delivering a good job as coach. So I’m going to restart from the beginning. And we’re not leaving until you get it. Even if it takes all day. Or the next day.” 💀

Controversial? Yes.

Does it work 99.99% of the time? Absolutely.

The Twist:

I flip the accountability onto myself — “I’m failing as a coach” — which puts the pressure back on THEM.

They can’t yawn when the Super Villain just called himself out and committed to restart. Now they’re invested.

That’s not fear of the room. That’s owning the room by owning your failure first.

📌 The Dot: The Boss & The Friend

Ancelotti names the balancing act:

“There is a difficult and important thing to get right — to have a good relationship with the players but also be the boss at the same time.”

“It is not impossible to do and it is strange that many people think the manager cannot have a strong, positive relationship with the players while still maintaining his authority.”

Friend or Boss? Care or Authority? Most people think you have to pick one.

The Field Reality:

Sam Prasad solved this for me before I even knew it was a problem.

Back then, I’d never heard the word “candor.” Sam used to tell me: “Be black and white. Be honest and transparent with your team.”

I couldn’t do it with the team. Surprisingly, I could do it with him.

When he asked why, he diagnosed my problem and gave me the Rubber Band Theory. 🏹

Sam’s Rubber Band Theory:

Imagine:

🏹 Rubber band = Your delivery mechanism

🏹 Feedback on paper = The arrow

🏹 Team member = The target

My Problem:

I was starting from “Care Personally” — which meant I NEVER pulled the rubber band back. I was too worried about hurting them.

Result?

🚫 The arrow never left

🚫 The feedback never landed

🚫 Nothing changed

Sam’s Fix:

⚡ Starting position = Professional (rubber band pulled back, ready to shoot)

⚡ Pull it back with confidence — you KNOW they won’t take it personally

⚡ Release — the arrow flies, feedback lands

⚡ After release, rubber band returns to professional zone

The Twist:

Here’s the insight that changed everything:

🚫 If you move with them PERSONALLY first → You won’t challenge them PROFESSIONALLY

✅ If you move with them PROFESSIONALLY first → They will connect with you PERSONALLY

Sam was practicing Radical Candor before Kim Scott even wrote the book.

I’m the proof the theory works. 🎯

📌 The Dot: Careers in Your Hands

Ancelotti admits the weight:

“You are not used to being in this position, where you have the careers of others in your hands.”

“Understanding and accepting that I was the boss was very difficult for me. I knew my own inadequacies, my own vulnerabilities, and I could not believe that others could not see that.”

This is imposter syndrome at the leadership level. “How can I hold their careers when I know my own flaws?”

The Field Reality:

Honestly? I never felt this weight.

Not because I’m arrogant. Because my frame was different from the start.

⚡ Pep Guardiola: My role is to make players better versions of themselves

⚡ Sam Prasad: Focus on their career growth — financial growth will follow

I’m not “holding their careers.” I’m enabling their growth.

The Twist:

Some leaders feel the burden of responsibility.

I feel the purpose of it.

That reframe changes everything. You’re not carrying their weight. You’re clearing their path.

Like Fury telling the Avengers: “I’m not here to fight your battles. I’m here to make sure you can fight them.” 🛡️

📌 The Dot: Managing Talent

Ancelotti says this is the hardest part:

“Of all the leadership challenges, one of the most difficult is managing talent.”

And drops this truth:

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. To get people to work hard for you, you need to show them you want them to achieve career success for their sake.”

High performers. Strong opinions. Big egos. How do you lead them without crushing them or losing them?

The Field Reality:

I never pushed them for success.

I take cues from Toyota Production System (TPS) — go to the gemba. 🏭

Gemba = where the work happens.

When you spend time in the gemba, the magic happens. You don’t have to push.

My message to the team:

⚡ Go to the field every day

⚡ Play with passion

⚡ Make healthy progress

⚡ Enjoy the game

Success comes eventually if you stay in the game. It’s milestones on an infinite journey — not a finish line.

The Twist:

Most managers chase results. I chase presence in the work.

🚫 Don’t push them for success

✅ Enable their presence in the gemba

✅ Let the healthy progress compound

The results follow. They always do. ♾️

📌 The Dot: The Will to Prepare

Ancelotti quotes a truth that separates amateurs from professionals:

“Everybody has the will to win but only the best have the will to prepare to win.”

Everyone wants the trophy. Few want the boring, repetitive, unglamorous work that winning requires.

The Field Reality:

Culture plays the biggest part. And I invest heavily in it.

I call it infusing culture as the slow poison. 🧪

You don’t force preparation. You seep it into the team. Day by day. Drip by drip. Until it’s in their blood.

And here’s the reality of DevOps, SRE, and QA:

We are crisis management squads. 🚨

What do we face every day? Crisis.

So we have to prepare ourselves as warriors — so that when there’s a war, we’re ready already.

The MCU Frame: 🛡️

Think about Captain America, Falcon, Hawkeye, Black Widow.

They’re not gods. They don’t have magic powers or super suits.

They’re warriors. Trained. Prepared. Always ready.

When the portal opens and aliens pour through, they don’t scramble. They execute.

That’s what I’m building.

The Twist:

But here’s the confusion — I also tell them to have fun. 🎮

⚡ Prepare like warriors — rigorous, focused, fearless

⚡ BUT enjoy the game while competing

That’s not contradiction. That’s elite sports mentality.

The best teams compete with intensity AND joy. Confusing? Yes. True? Absolutely.

🎯 The Debrief

The transition from player to coach is the hardest move in any career.

Ancelotti felt the fear, the weight, the imposter syndrome.

I felt it differently — because Sam Prasad rewired me early.

Here’s the operating system:

⚡ Be the dumbest person in your team — if you are, you’re leading the right team

⚡ You don’t need to know everything — and you should KNOW that

⚡ Own the room by owning your failure first — the Restart Power Move

⚡ Start Professional, not Personal — the Rubber Band Theory

⚡ You’re not holding their careers — you’re clearing their path

⚡ Chase presence in the gemba, not results — the results follow

⚡ Infuse culture as slow poison — warriors who have fun

The craft got you here. But the craft won’t keep you here.

Letting go of the craft? That’s the real transition.

And once you do?

You stop being the player who scores.

You become the coach who builds the team that wins. 🏆

Stay dumb. Stay ready. Stay poisoned. 💀⚡

Class dismissed. ✊

We’re back with another file from the archives.

This time, the intel comes from a different source. Not an engineering leader. Not a Silicon Valley playbook.

A football manager. Carlo Ancelotti.

Four-time Champions League winner. The man who managed Zidane, Beckham, Ronaldo — and made them play like a symphony. 🎶

His book Quiet Leadership sat on my shelf for a while. When I finally opened it, I realized he wasn’t writing about football. He was writing about US.

Let’s connect the dots.

📌 The Dot: Leadership Cannot Be Imitated

Ancelotti opens with this:

“We should never cease to learn.”

Then drops this:

“Leadership can be learned but cannot be imitated. It is possible to observe other great leaders at work, but if your natural inclination is to be quiet, calm and take care of others it is unwise to try to be anyone else.”

Read that again. Leadership can be LEARNED. But it cannot be IMITATED.

There’s a difference.

The Field Reality:

Let me confuse you. 🎯

I tried to imitate Sam Prasad for years. He was my mentor from 2004 to 2010. Every time I copied his moves, he’d call me aside:

“I don’t want you to be my clone. I want you to be YOU.”

It took me a while to understand. Today, I can say:

⚡ On the outside — I am Swami

⚡ On the inside — My leadership is heavily influenced by Sam, even though he’s no longer around to guide me

⚡ The truth — I carry him in me

And that’s the difference between imitation and absorption.

🚫 Imitation = copying the moves

✅ Absorption = making it yours

Over time, we get inspired by people. Without even realizing it, we practice their lessons in our own way. That’s not cloning. That’s evolution.

The Twist:

Here’s the Swami signature that I didn’t borrow from anyone:

I want to be seen as a Super Villain. Not a Hero. 🦹‍♂️

Why?

🦸 Heroes have rules — they have to be noble, fair, follow the code

🦹 Villains have freedom — no script, no constraints, crazy is allowed 💀

And I use that freedom FOR my team, not against them.

Think about it — in Avengers, Nick Fury isn’t the hero. He’s the guy in the shadows making uncomfortable calls. Lying to the team when needed. Taking the heat from the World Security Council. Doing what the “heroes” can’t do. 👀

That’s the Super Villain energy.

I become the lightning rod. The one they can get angry at. The bad cop — no, the Super Villain — so they can focus on the game.

Like Pep Guardiola says: “If you want to get angry at your team, don’t. Get angry at ME together. Then focus on the game.”

Abhishek Paul, our Kissflow Cultural Shepherd, sometimes appreciates me for being the bad cop. I feel sorry for him — I always wanted to be a Super Villain! 😈

But at the end of the day, my villainy has only benefited the team and the company.

And to my leads, I say the same thing Sam said to me: I don’t want you to be my clone. But I want you to join my club of people with the same mental disorders. 🧠

📌 The Dot: The Quiet Side

Ancelotti’s core philosophy on the sidelines:

“The game belongs to the players. Once the whistle blows, the coach must trust, watch, and resist the urge to control every moment. Preparation is yours. Execution is theirs.”

This is the heart of Quiet Leadership. The restraint. The trust.

The Field Reality:

I’ve shown you the Soccer Coach yelling from the sideline. The “patience driven by impatience.” The Rough Sea intensity.

But what about quiet? 🤫

Let me go back to the football pitch. 🏟️

All my coaching, strategies, and playbooks happen:

📋 Before the game — Preparation, alignment, playbook

⏸️ Half-time — Corrections, adjustments

📋 After the game — Debrief, learnings

But DURING the game? I have to let the captains and players execute what we agreed upon.

Yes, I can jump in when required. But I can’t shout the entire 90 minutes. If I do:

🚫 They’ll only be listening, not playing

🚫 They’ll become puppets of my directions instead of owning their game

So I cage what Noordeen and Aravindhan call the Advice Monster. 🐲

Think of Nick Fury on the Helicarrier during the Battle of New York. The Avengers are fighting. Chaos everywhere. What does Fury do? He watches. He trusts. He doesn’t micromanage Stark’s flying or tell Cap how to throw the shield. He lets them execute. 🛸

Does it make me nervous? Anxious? Absolutely.

The Twist:

But here’s what happens when I go quiet:

✨ The team surprises me

✨ They do things THEY didn’t think they could do

✨ My strategy stops being a script — it becomes a framework

✨ They take it to the required breadth and depth — on their own

In those moments, my listening and watching helped the team more than my dictating ever could.

Quiet isn’t passive. It’s deliberate restraint that lets them fly. 🕊️

📌 The Dot: Help Them Stay in Love

Ancelotti writes:

“As children, we first play the game because we fall in love with it… Sometimes, somewhere along the way the pressures and difficulties on and off the pitch can cause the passion to fade or die. It is my responsibility to help the players stay in love.”

This hit me. Because my players didn’t fall in love first.

The Field Reality:

Most DevOps, SRE, and QA folks didn’t aim to land here. They were pushed.

💼 College told them to try it

💼 First job assigned them to the role

💼 They didn’t choose it — it chose them

For sports pros, the journey is:

🏆 Inspired by the sport and its legends → Pursued the passion → Made it to the field

For my people? The journey is REVERSED:

🔧 Placed by compulsion → Joined the field → NOW need to find the love

That’s a leadership problem I have to solve.

The Twist:

I tell them straight: “You came here by compulsion. That’s okay. But to GROW, you need to develop passion — or hop out and find it somewhere else.”

This takes cultural work:

🎯 Flood them with materials, directions, “confusions”

🎯 Help them find their own inspiration

🎯 Introduce them to the legends of the field

Because here’s the key: If they find someone in the field to admire, the passion engine starts. 🔥

Every footballer has a Messi, a Ronaldo, a Maradona. But who’s the legend of DevOps? Of SRE? Of QA?

Part of my job is helping them FIND that hero. Without a hero, no fire.

📌 The Dot: Never Stop Learning

Ancelotti opens his book with:

“We should never cease to learn.”

Sam Prasad said the same thing — before DevOps was even a word.

“Learning is a continuous process.”

The infinity concept. ♾️

The Field Reality:

Over the years, thanks to Sam and my other bosses, I developed a system:

📚 Biographies — Entrepreneurs, companies, sports professionals, coaches

📖 Fiction — English and Tamil — stories shape us too

🎙️ Interviews — Watching how leaders articulate their thinking

🎬 Movies — Leadership and team dynamics on screen

That’s how I landed in MCU. Not for entertainment. For education. 🦸

The Twist:

When I read and watch, I connect the dots. The leaders I study went through the same struggles I did.

⚡ Sometimes they handled it the way I did → Validation

⚡ Sometimes they did it differently → New angle

⚡ The biggest lessons come from their failures, not their wins 💀

This IS the blog. “Connecting the Dots I’ve Collected” — it’s not just a title. It’s my learning operating system.

I’m still rusty. Still learning. Still reshaping how I lead.

The day I stop learning is the day I stop leading.

📌 The Dot: Without Players, No Game

Ancelotti states the obvious — but most leaders forget it:

“Without the players there can be no game, just as without people and a product, there is no business.”

Under pressure, we optimize for systems, processes, metrics. And we lose sight of the humans.

The Field Reality:

Sam gave me another framework. Not PowerPoint. The REAL PPT:

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People → Align them to culture first

⚙️ Process → They will drive the process you recommend

🛠️ Tools → They will select and optimize the tools

The hardest part? Aligning the people. But once that’s done, the rest follows.

The Twist:

In 2018, I made a switch:

🔧 FROM: Techno-Functional Leader (The Craft)

🛡️ TO: Cultural-Functional Leader (The Shield)

I went from Captain to Coach.

⚽ Captain plays on the field

📋 Coach builds the team that plays

I chose to step off the pitch and focus on the humans. Like Abhishek Paul calls himself Cultural Shepherd, I want that tag too.

Bootstrapping teams and their operations — that’s my playbook now. That’s my strength.

📌 The Dot: Bouncing Back Together

Ancelotti says:

“Working with these athletes, taking care of them and helping them develop and grow, building trust and loyalty, sharing our successes and bouncing back together from disappointment, this is the heart of my job for me.”

Successes AND disappointments. Together.

The Field Reality:

I tell my team:

“Go to the field every day. Play with passion. Make healthy progress. Enjoy the game. Success will come — eventually and consistently.”

When they get knocked down, I ask them to dig:

🔍 What went right?

🔍 What went wrong?

🔍 What can we do to bounce back — and never fail the SAME way again?

Blameless postmortem. DevOps and SRE already practice this. We just apply it to everything.

The Twist:

Here’s the Super Villain’s code:

To the outside world (stakeholders):

⚡ When they WIN → I shamelessly promote them

⚡ When they FAIL → I take the hit

To the inside (the team):

⚡ When they WIN → They own the glory

⚡ When they FAIL → They own the accountability

I’m the shield externally. I’m the mirror internally. 🛡️🪞

Netflix calls it “Freedom and Responsibility.” That’s the building block of the culture I’m constructing.

“Whatever it takes.” — That’s not just Endgame energy. That’s bouncing back energy. 💪

📌 The Dot: Why I Get Up

Once upon a time, I got upset when team members left for another company. I treated them like family.

One day, Sam had enough. He shouted at me:

“We are a TEAM, not a family!”

Hard lesson. 💀

The Field Reality:

Pep Guardiola says it best: As a coach, our responsibility is to make the player better versions of themselves. Day in. Day out.

That goes for as long as they stay with us. And when they move on?

They become part of my Avengers Initiative. 🌍

Spreading across the world. Carrying the mission forward to places I’ll never go.

Like Tony passing the arc reactor to Peter. Like Cap passing the shield to Sam. The mantle moves. The legacy continues. 🛡️

The Twist:

It’s a process. Magic doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes the team doesn’t align with me. Sometimes I feel low.

But like Captain America, I tell myself:

“I can do this all day.” 🛡️

And I retry. Like Dr. Strange bargaining with Dormammu. Time loop. Run it again. 🔁

Coaching people is an addiction. And only crazy coaches like me will admit it.

I don’t want to rehabilitate from this addiction.

This is why I get up every day.

🎯 The Debrief

Ancelotti taught me that quiet leadership isn’t weakness. It’s deliberate restraint.

The Super Villain has two modes:

🦹‍♂️ Loud — When I need to take the hit, cage the blame, be the lightning rod

🤫 Quiet — When I need to step back, let them play, and watch them surprise me

Here’s the operating system:

⚡ Leadership can be learned, but cannot be imitated — absorb, don’t clone

⚡ Cage the Advice Monster during the game — strategy becomes framework, not script

⚡ They came by compulsion; help them find passion — the Role Model Engine

⚡ People → Process → Tools — align the humans first

⚡ Shield externally, mirror internally — take the hit outside, hold accountability inside

⚡ Team, not family — build your Avengers Initiative, spread the legacy

⚡ Coaching is addiction — I don’t want rehab

The sea is still rough. The Super Villain is still loud when needed.

But sometimes, the quietest thing you can do is let them fly. 🕊️

And that’s when the magic happens.

Stay quiet. Stay loud. Stay addicted. 🦹‍♂️⚡

Class dismissed. ✊

🎬 Experience It Visually

Finished reading? Now see it.

I transformed these seven dots into comic-style visual stories. Same Super Villain wisdom. Frame by frame.

👉 View the Comic Tales version →

Part of the Connecting the Dots I've Collected — Comic Tales series.

We’re back with another file from the archives.

I’ve been sitting with Camille Fournier’s The Manager’s Path again. This time, a section most people skip: “How to Be Managed.”

Not how to manage. How to be managed.

Most engineers hear that and think, “That’s not my job.” And that’s exactly why they stay stuck.

•••

📌 The Dot: The Emperor Has No Clothes

Camille doesn’t sugarcoat it:

“Part of being a good manager is figuring out how to be managed… Developing a sense of ownership and authority for your own experiences at work, and not relying on your manager to set the entire tone for your relationship, is an important step in owning your career.”

And then:

“Your manager cannot read your mind.”

Your career is YOUR operation. Your manager is an asset, not your handler!

The Field Reality:

Let me take you back to October 2004.

I was green. India was conservative. You didn’t challenge your boss. You didn’t debate. You kept your head down and waited for instructions.

Then I met Sam Prasad.

Sam didn’t just allow feedback. He demanded it.

He used to say: “It’s my responsibility to correct you when you’re wrong. But who corrects ME when I’M wrong?”

That question broke my brain. 🤯

He explained it like this:

⚡ A CEO has a bird’s eye view — he sees what a player misses on the field

⚡ But sometimes he misses what the player and captain see from ground level

⚡ Both views are incomplete alone

If you’ve read No Rules Rules, you know the concept: “Tell the Emperor When He Has No Clothes.”

Sam was practicing that in 2004. Before Netflix wrote it down. Before it was trendy.

The Twist:

He didn’t just ask for feedback. He made it safe to give it.

When you criticized him, he responded with gratitude. Not defensiveness. Not “noted.” Genuine gratitude. He gave us what behavioral scientists call “belonging cues” — proof that speaking up wouldn’t get us burned.

The time I spent with him — October 2004 to October 2010 — was my MBA. The best MBA this galaxy could offer.

I carried that forward. I never hesitate to take things up with my bosses if it delivers value to the team and the company. Like a Football Coach fighting with club management for what the team needs. 🛡️

That’s not insubordination. That’s managing up.

📌 The Dot: Solutions, Not Just Problems

Camille says:

“Especially as you become more senior, remember that your manager expects you to bring solutions, not problems. Try not to make every 1–1 about how you need something, how something is wrong, or how you want something more.”

Solid advice. But here’s where Sam turned it into steel.

The Field Reality:

If I disagreed with Sam’s direction, I’d tell him why I didn’t like it. He’d listen. Then he’d ask:

“Do you have a better way?”

If I didn’t? He’d say: “Then do what I told you.”

Harsh? Maybe. But here’s the rule:

🚫 What (the problem) + Why (you disagree) = Not enough

✅ What + Why + How (your better approach) = Now we talk

Your right to challenge is earned by having a better path.

I use the same rule with my team today. Don’t just bring problems. Don’t just tell me why you’re unhappy. Tell me how to do it better than what I proposed. Then I’ll debate all day. ⚡

The Twist:

Most people don’t bring the “How” because they’re scared.

💀 Scared of the wrong call

💀 Scared of ownership if it fails

💀 Scared of blame

My answer? Take the shot. Miss. Recalibrate.

A wrong decision you can pivot from beats no decision at all.

I’m a patient guy — but my patience is driven by impatience.

You get space to find your How. But the clock is ticking. When the portal opens and aliens start pouring through, debate time is over. Fall in line. Execute.

📌 The Dot: You Are Responsible for Yourself

Camille is blunt:

“Knowing yourself is step one. Step two is going after what you want. Bring agendas to your 1–1s when you have things you need to talk about. When you want to work on projects, ask. Advocate for yourself.”

This is where most people fail. They wait.

The Field Reality:

At Kissflow, we run 1:1s using what we call Zephyr (yes, it sounds like a SHIELD jet — on purpose).

The agenda isn’t mine. It’s theirs.

🎯 Open field

🎯 Bring 5 talking points

🎯 Personal, professional, no holds barred

🎯 You drive

And you know what happens sometimes? Someone shows up and says:

“I’ve got nothing to discuss. Can we skip this one?”

That’s the trap. 👀

People think managing up means “raise issues when they exist.” But the real game is staying connected even when nothing’s on fire.

The ones who say “I’ve got nothing” are treating Zephyr like a complaint box. When it’s empty, they think the job is done.

The Twist:

The ones who own it? They bring:

🔥 Career questions — “What should I learn next?”

🔥 Feedback for ME — “That meeting didn’t land well”

🔥 Half-formed ideas — “I’ve been thinking…”

🔥 Personal context — “Here’s what’s going on in my life”

I don’t let anyone off the hook. You show up, you bring something to the table.

Because here’s the truth: If you’re not driving the conversation with your manager, someone else is driving your career.

And it’s not you.

📌 The Dot: When You Want Something, Ask

Camille doesn’t hedge:

“When you want a raise, ask for it. When you want a promotion, find out what you need to do to get it… You will not get everything you ask for, and asking is not usually a fun or comfortable experience. However, it’s the fastest way forward.”

She’s right. Ask. But understand the order.

The Field Reality:

Sam Prasad had a rule:

“Focus on career growth. Financial growth will follow. It can get delayed, but it won’t get denied.”

He said the reverse doesn’t work. Chase money first, and your career stagnates. It’s a one-way street.

I’ve seen this play out:

✅ The people who ask “What do I need to learn? Where should I grow?” — they end up ahead

🚫 The people who only ask “When’s my raise?” — they stall

The Twist:

Does that mean you shouldn’t ask for money? No.

I prompt my team during appraisals: Give me three options for what you’re expecting. I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll do my best.

🎯 Promotions? Sometimes I surprise them — I see readiness before they do. Sometimes they ask and I say, “Not yet, but here’s the map.”

🎯 Projects? Negotiation. Win some, lose some. Sometimes we agree to disagree and park it for future debates.

The point isn’t getting a “yes.” The point is having the conversation.

The people who never ask? They never get the map. They stay lost.

📌 The Dot: From Passenger to Pilot

Camille describes the evolution:

“As you become more senior, remember that your manager expects you to bring solutions, not problems… Asking for advice on how she might approach the problem is always a good way to show respect and trust.”

This is the arc. From passenger to pilot.

From passenger to pilot. Own the flight.

The Field Reality:

Let me tell you about Noordeen M & Aravindhan T.

When they started, they’d come to me with What and Why. “Here’s the problem. Here’s why it’s hard.” Then wait for me to solve it.

🚗 Stage 1: Passenger mode.

I kept pushing: “Give me the How.”

Slowly, they started bringing options. Not perfect ones. But options. We’d debate, negotiate, sometimes agree to disagree.

🛫 Stage 2: Co-pilot mode.

Then something shifted.

When our Technical Project Manager Ram left, they stepped up to fill the vacuum. When I got stretched thin taking over QA, they absorbed parts of my role without me asking.

✈️ Stage 3: Pilot mode.

The Twist:

They don’t just manage up anymore. They anticipate. They take things off my plate before I realize I’m overloaded.

And here’s the kicker: They use our feedback systems to make ME better.

👀 They told me I was talking too much

👀 They told me I was meeting too often

👀 They told me I wasn’t being specific enough

I listened. I changed.

Remember in Avengers when Stark tells Fury the Tesseract play was dangerous and Fury has to reckon with it? That moment when the team challenges the man who assembled them?

That’s what managing up looks like when it’s working. The people you lead make you sharper. That’s not insubordination. That’s trust. That’s Avengers-level evolution. 🛡️

🎯 The Debrief: Take It Off Their Plate

Here’s what managing up really means:

Become someone your boss doesn’t have to manage.

⚡ Make decisions

⚡ Update where needed

⚡ Own your failures

⚡ Face the consequences

⚡ Prove — through actions, not words — that you’ve got this

“I got this” isn’t arrogance. It’s liberation for your boss. They can focus elsewhere because you’ve removed yourself as a problem.

That’s what Sam taught me. That’s what I practice today. That’s what Noordeen and Aravindhan are learning to do.

And me? I’m still rusty. Still learning from my bosses Dinesh Varadharajan & Suresh Sambandam every day. Still hitting my head against how they think, how they see things I miss, how they push me when I should’ve pushed myself.

The learning never stops. The managing up never stops.

🌊 Your manager can’t read your mind

🌊 Your manager is your co-pilot, not your pilot. The flight is still yours!

🌊 Your manager can’t swim for you

But if you step up? If you bring the How? If you take it off their plate?

They’ll be waiting on the shore when you make it home.

Manage up or get managed out.

Class dismissed. ⚡✊

We’re back with another file from the archives.

I’ve been reading The Manager’s Path by Camille Fournier. It’s solid intel. It lays out the theory of what a manager should do: Mentor, guide, protect, and serve.

But theory is different when bullets are flying. 🛡️

I’ve spent years in the trenches (and the dressing rooms) of Engineering Leadership. Here is how I connect the dots between Camille’s definitions and the scars I’ve earned on the field.

📌 The Dot: The Pulse Check (1:1s)

Camille says:
“One-on-one meetings (1–1s) with your direct manager are an essential feature of a good working relationship… 1–1s serve two purposes. First, they create human connection between you and your manager. That doesn’t mean you spend the whole time talking about your hobbies… But letting your manager into your life a little bit is important, because when there are stressful things happening… it will be much easier to ask your manager for time off or tell him what you need if he has context on you as a person.”

The Field Reality:
Most managers treat 1:1s like an interrogation. “What’s the status? When is it shipping?” 🕵️‍♂️

I don’t do that. I follow the Bill Campbell Framework (The Trillion Dollar Coach). The agenda isn’t mine — it’s yours.

At Kissflow, we run two protocols based on experience level (We call them Zephyr — and yes, that sounds like a SHIELD jet):

• For the Rookies (Zephyr 2.0): Open field. List 5 talking points. Anything goes. Personal, professional, no holds barred.

• For the Veterans (Zephyr 3.0): Targeted strikes. We focus on specific quadrants: Performance, Peer Relationships, Leadership and Innovation.

The Twist:
I used to think I was the one evaluating them. But then the team started using these sessions to criticize me.
And you know what? I loved it.

It proved we are actively practicing Radical Candor. We haven’t mastered it — we have miles to go — but the signal is clear. They feel safe enough to call out the boss. That’s not insubordination; that’s trust. If Cap can tell Tony he’s wrong, your team should be able to tell you.

📌 The Dot: Damage Control (Feedback)

Camille says:
“Ideally, the feedback you get from your manager will be somewhat public if it’s praise, and private if it’s criticism*… **Good managers know that delivering feedback quickly is more valuable than waiting for a convenient time to say something.** Praising in public is considered to be a best practice…”*

The Field Reality:
I’m going to go rogue on the “private criticism” part. 💥

I view my role like a Soccer Coach.
When the match is on, and a player is out of position, does the coach wait for a private meeting next Tuesday to tell them?

No. The coach yells from the sideline. “Move left! Pass the ball!”

Sometimes the audience hears it. Sometimes the team hears it.
It’s not about shaming; it’s about winning.

I practice “Care Personally, Challenge Professionally.”

• If I didn’t care about you, I’d let you fail in silence.

• Because I care, I call it out in real-time.

Does it sting? Sure. But great players (and great engineers) know that the scoreboard judges us all day long. They use the feedback to sharpen their game. We don’t have time for a “Compliment Sandwich” when the aliens are coming out of the portal. 👽

📌 The Dot: The “Why” (Purpose & Growth)

Camille says:
“It’s great when managers can identify and assign stretch projects that will help us grow and learn new things*…. **Your manager should be the person who shows you the larger picture of how your work fits into the team’s goals**, and helps you feel a sense of purpose in the day-to-day work.”*

The Field Reality:
I owe my career to my mentor, Sam Prasad. I lost him in 2010, but his code still runs in my head.

Years ago, I asked him why he wasn’t deploying me to my strengths. I wanted the easy wins.
He told me: “I see strengths in you that you don’t see yet.”

Then he told me he was going to drop me in the middle of a rough sea and wait for me on the shore. 🌊

I asked, “What if I drown?”
He smiled and said, “I’ll know. And I’ll help if it is really required. But if you know the rescue boat is coming, you won’t swim hard enough.”

I took that lesson and made it the standard operating procedure for the entire Team DevOps & SRE.

I’ve deployed SREs to fight fires before they even knew how to hold the hose. And now, the culture has taken root. My Tech Leads, Noordeen and Aravindhan, are doing the exact same thing.

They assign critical missions — MongoDB version updates, Kubernetes upgrades — to interns who are still figuring out what a database is.

It sounds reckless. It isn’t.

That’s how you build Avengers. You don’t build them in a classroom. You build them by dropping them in the rough sea — maintenance, documentation, tough bugs — and watching them realize they can swim. 🏊‍♂️

99% of the time? They step up. They survive. And they become stronger than the ones who stayed on the boat.

📌 The Dot: Civil War (Conflict Resolution)

Camille says:
“If you’re struggling with a teammate… your manager should be there to help you navigate that situation, and she can work with the other person or team as necessary to help you get to resolution… If you’re unhappy with a teammate, your manager may not do anything unless you bring the issue to her attention.”

The Field Reality:
Engineers have egos. Sometimes a Pull Request turns into Captain America: Civil War. 🛡️ vs 🤖

Do I step in and separate them?
No. I let them fight.

But I make them fight by the rules. We use the Netflix 4A Feedback Framework:

1. Aim to Assist (Don’t just be mean)

2. Actionable (Give a solution)

3. Appreciate (This is crucial)

4. Accept or Discard (The receiver has the final say)

Why “Appreciate”?
It isn’t just politeness. It is an enforced reaction to calm the nerves. When someone critiques you, the first reaction is always denial. As the saying goes, “The brain agrees, but the heart disagrees.” We force the appreciation step to quiet the ego so the logic can land.

We also run “Lean Coffee” sessions. Think of it like a Targeted AMA.
It can feel like ganging up — one person in the hot seat, with the team weighing in. But we stick to the code: Criticize the ACTION, not the PERSON.

It demonstrates that we care enough to challenge you professionally. It’s intense. It’s loud. But it clears the air.

We don’t need everyone to agree. We just need everyone to respect the mission.

🎯 The Debrief

Leadership isn’t about being the nice guy in the chair.
It’s about being the coach on the sideline, the mentor on the shore, and the referee in the ring.

It’s about creating the environment where:

• Feedback is fast.

• The sea is rough.

• But the team always swims home.

That’s Management 101.

Class dismissed. ⚡✊

For years, I’ve been collecting intel — patterns, insights, and signals from the field. Some came from books, some from the mission, and the rest from scars earned on the battlefield of engineering leadership.

Until now, most of that stayed in my head. That changes today.

•••

📌 The Intel: Don’t Lose the Signal

Camille Fournier, in The Manager’s Path, put it best. She identifies the friction point immediately:

“In my experience, most of the challenge of engineering management is in the intersection of ‘engineering’ and ‘management.’”

But she doesn’t stop there. She defines exactly what the job is — and what it isn’t:

“What engineering managers do, though, is not pure people management. We are managing groups of technical people, and most of us come into the role from a position of hands-on expertise. I wouldn’t recommend trying to do it any other way! Hands-on expertise is what gives you credibility and what helps you make decisions and lead your team effectively.”

These aren’t just words on a page. They describe exactly how we survived and evolved our DevOps & SRE setup.

🧭 The Protocol: How We Operate

At Team DevOps & SRE @ Kissflow, we don’t do “blurry” lines. We have a clear separation of engagement:

🚀 Techno-Functional Leadership (The Craft)
🚀 People Leadership (The Shield)

In our system, influence is earned through competence, not your job title. Look at how our heavy hitters operate:

⚡ Noordeen is our Tony Stark.
He leads with speed, systems thinking, and pure innovation. He sees the future and builds it before you finish your coffee.

⚡ Aravindhan is our Daredevil.
He leads with discipline, situational sharpness, and calm execution. He hears the heartbeat of the system and acts with precise judgment.

And my role?
My zone is People Leadership. My job isn’t to spoon-feed answers. My job is to create the kind of confusion that forces clarity.

🎯 Setting the target (Expectations)

🏛️ Holding the line (Culture & Boundaries)

⚖️ Keeping the score (Accountability)

We operate without overlap. They lead the tech; I guard the lane.

🔄 The Iterative D3O Loop

Techno-functional leadership isn’t a static painting on the wall. It’s a living loop:

Design → Develop → Deploy → Operate → Learn → Repeat

We call this Iterative D3O{Design → Develop → Deploy → Operate}. It prevents leaders from becoming bureaucrats.

• Leadership happens during the work, not in the meeting about the work.

• The loop keeps you connected to reality.

• Every cycle sharpens your technical intuition.

• If you aren’t in the loop, you aren’t leading. You’re just spectating. 👀

🛡️ The Guardrails

To keep the model intact and avoid drifting into “manager mode”:

⚙️ Stay close to the work. Monitor progress, not just status reports.
🧭 Guide through clarity. Pressure breaks pipes; clarity clears clogs.
🛠️ Lead by judgment. Your authority means nothing if your tech stack is crumbling.
🛡️ Compete, Collaborate & Accommodate. Iron sharpens iron.

Technical relevance isn’t optional. It is the signal the rest of the team follows.

🎯 The “Why”

Here’s the hard truth: In too many organizations, when a strong engineer gets promoted, the system strips them of their weapon. It pushes them toward spreadsheets, presentations and away from the craft.

Eventually, the silence sets in. They start asking:

• “Why am I not effective anymore?”

• “Why do I feel disconnected from my own team?”

They lose their identity. They become “Management.”

I’m writing this to stop the drift. This post is designed to create discomfort. I want you to pause and look at the gap between how you lead and how you should lead.

• Don’t let the role consume the craft.

• Don’t let the title kill the competence.

• Don’t let the scaling destroy the identity.

This isn’t just a definition — it’s a protection spell.

We wrote it down so you never forget the core truth: Leadership grows stronger when the craft remains alive.

Stay fast. Stay grounded. Stay ready. ⚡🛠️