Grandma in the Board Room  (English, Paperback, Jaganathan T)

Grandma in the Board Room (GIBR) is a gripping corporate saga of a current-day IT company, EmergePro, in the crucial years between the Chennai floods to the COVID19 lockdown. Emerge Pro is about to make a pathbreaking announcement. The protagonist of the story Krishna Prasad (KP), after a successful stint as its CEO, steering EmergePro from decline to unimaginable growth within a span of five years, is the architect of this surprise move. The story begins with an employee get-together, where the suspense is to be broken with an announcement by the founder. It weaves through the memory shares of the past five years of the stakeholders in this growth story. KP, an outsider CEO recruited before Chennai floods, has to find his way through the maze of corporate relationships and win the support of a diverse and disinclined leadership team. The journey winds through diverse ethnicity and leadership styles – weak leader Ananth Ram, indifferent Subendu Das, intimidatingly aggressive Suhas Ratnam, caring MD Rengarajan, faithful Neha Khosla, naïve and enthusiastic Krithika, talented but not-so-confident Ashok Kumar, ever-grateful Swetha Prakash, etc. – a complex intertwined spaghetti of minds. KP has to carefully use his fork without breaking the links. How the wisdom of the stories KP had learned in his childhood from his grandma helps him overcome the challenges faced by him is a great learning and a great read as well.