Surrounded By Fire

Leading an IT services or consulting team isn't like leading other teams. The pressure is constant, the customers are visible, the escalations are real, and the margin for error is thin. Most leadership books were written from a distance. This one wasn't.

Surrounded by Fire is a practical leadership guide for managers and executives in IT services and consulting environments... the people responsible for delivery, quality, and the humans doing the work. It was written from inside thirty years of that work, across managed services, consulting, and technical delivery organizations, by a leader who has managed through go-lives, burnout, escalations, talent crises, and the relentless pressure of keeping a service organization performing at a high standard.

The book's central premise is simple. In a high-pressure environment, the leader is either a thermostat or a thermometer. A thermometer reflects the temperature of the room. A thermostat sets it. The difference between those two things... in a critical escalation, in a performance conversation, in a team that is quietly burning out... is everything.

The book's philosophy is adaptive servant leadership. The conviction that caring for the people doing the work and holding them to a high standard are not competing obligations. They are the same obligation, practiced well.

Across thirty chapters and six parts, Surrounded by Fire delivers frameworks that work under real conditions... not ideal ones. How to use CSAT as a diagnostic tool, not just a score. How to build psychological safety in a team that handles live customer environments. How to delegate without losing accountability. How to recognize burnout before it becomes attrition. How to develop leaders who leave stronger than they arrived. How to stay calm when the room isn't.

These are not theories. They are tools... built, tested, broken, and rebuilt across real engagements with real consequences.

If you lead people through the kind of work that doesn't stop when conditions get hard, this book was written for you.