Contact Get the Book Book Snippets Micro-CEO About the Book
Dear Boss Book
“As a middle manager, of any sort, you are in effect a chief executive of an organisation yourself. Don’t wait for the principles and practices you find appealing to be imposed from the top. As a micro-CEO, you can improve your own and your group’s performance and productivity, whether or not the rest of the company follows suit.”

High Output Management
Andrew S. Grove
co-founder and ex-CEO of Intel

Book & Chapters
The idea for this book originated from a light-hearted and similarly titled LinkedIn post from way back in August 2015. The post was shaped in the form of a letter written by an employee – a fictional character named Joe Employee – to his boss. In the letter, Joe outlined five reasons why he will not be leaving anytime soon, attributing his reasons primarily to having a good boss. The book chapters include :

  • MANAGERS, LEADERS, AND SUPER HEROES
  • WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY
  • REASON 1: STRATEGY & EXECUTION PLAN
  • THE BIG PICTURE
  • A PRIMER ON THE FINANCIALS
  • REASON 2: ASSIGNING CHALLENGING TASKS
  • REASON 3: REMOVING OBSTACLES
  • REASON 4: SHOWING APPRECIATION
  • REASON 5: OPEN TO FEEDBACK
  • THE GALLUP Q12 & GOOGLE'S UPWARD FEEDBACK SURVEYS


The book also emphasises the importance of embracing the mindset of a micro-CEO of the team that you are leading, a mindset put forth by the legendary Andy Grove, the co-founder and former CEO of Intel. This book is unique in that sense. It adopts this unconventional approach towards the quest of being a good, if not great, boss.

About the Author
Sekar Shanmugam
At the age of 41, Sekar Shanmugam decided to quit his job as a senior business leader in a global technology company to attend business school full time – much to the shock of many of his colleagues and to the exhilaration of his wife and family. Following the completion of his MBA at the University of Cambridge in 2007, Sekar resumed his corporate career in the agri-business and the telecommunications sectors, where he was responsible for formulating and delivering strategic change, ensuring operational effectiveness, leading continuous improvement initiatives, and, more importantly, managing and aligning people to deliver business results.

Sekar is an avid football fan and a lifelong supporter of Liverpool FC. So, it will not come as much of a surprise that he could not help himself from incorporating football analogies to explain key concepts in this book.

LinkedIn Connect with Sekar on LinkedIn.