Taylan Yildirim

Co-Author & Leadership Strategist

Taylan Yildirim is a Seattle-based executive leader, speaker, and the author of The Gravity of Command: Leading with Purpose in the Age of AI. With over 25 years of experience at the forefront of telecommunications and digital transformation, Taylan specializes in navigating the high-stakes intersection of ethics, disruptive innovation, and organizational purpose.

Taylan has spent his career operating at the intersection of complexity and consequence — where technology, scale, and leadership collide. From leading large-scale telecom transformations to navigating high-stakes delivery environments, he has built a reputation for turning ambiguity into execution. Over the past two decades, he has led global teams of more than a thousand engineers, operators, and problem-solvers, delivering mission-critical programs across cloud transformation, automation, and AI-driven systems. His work lives not in theory, but in systems that must perform — every day, at scale, without failure.

Alongside his executive role, Taylan is currently pursuing a doctorate in business management, where his research focuses on how artificial intelligence is reshaping governance, decision-making, and the structure of modern organizations.

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Shailesh Shrivastava

Co-Author & Strategic Advisor

Known as “The Strategy Guy,” Shailesh Shrivastava is a technology executive and business leader with over two decades of experience at the epicenter of enterprise transformation and emerging technology. A hands-on enthusiast and early adopter, Shailesh has spent his career decoding the complex interplay between data, technology, and human behavior to support some of the world’s leading tech companies in their most critical business decisions. From his early days as a technical engineer to leading global technology sales and business development in the telecommunications sector, Shailesh brings a rare, “full-stack” perspective to leadership.

His work in The Gravity of Command centers on a profound truth: while AI will automate decision-making, the leaders who thrive will be those who anchor their organizations with an unwavering sense of purpose and human connection.

A key architect of TM Forum’s customer experience and strategy frameworks, Shailesh translates front-line digital transformation into the actionable “survival guide” required for the AI era.

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Why This Book

The Espresso Shot: Why This Book Exists

The Espresso Shot

“The code is getting smarter, but the ‘Gravity’ of human command is drifting into space.”

— Taylan & Shailesh, Starbucks Bellevue

This book started over a couple of espressos at a Starbucks in Bellevue — Seattle, the city where Starbucks first brewed, and now the global headquarters for Amazon and Microsoft. The unofficial “Silicon Forest” of the world.

Taylan and I were taking a breather from a messy customer automation project when we overheard young professionals at the next table talking about changing the world with Generative AI at lightning speed. Naturally, we opened ChatGPT to see if it could solve our project’s current headache. The results were… mixed. One suggestion was obvious, the second was totally impractical, and the third was just plain wrong.

We tweaked the prompt and tried again. This time, it suggested exactly what we had already been discussing — we’re convinced it was eavesdropping on us.

But that moment gave us a much bigger lightbulb: even in a city defined by tech giants, there is a massive gap. The technology is moving at warp speed, but the leadership required to keep these projects on track hasn’t quite caught up.

⚡

The Disruption We Witnessed

Watching talented leaders become irrelevant not from lack of effort, but from lack of a clear leadership identity in the age of AI.

🧭

The Gap in the Literature

Business books covered AI strategy. Psychology books covered leadership. No one was bridging the two with practical, field-tested frameworks.

🌎

A Global Leadership Crisis

From boardrooms in New York to operational hubs in Singapore, the pattern was universal: AI was exposing leadership gaps that had always existed but could no longer be hidden.

Behind the Pages

How We Built This

From a shared OneDrive doc to a published book — an 18-month journey across continents, classrooms, conversations, and code.

Sep 2024 — The Seed

Two Espressos in Bellevue

Over coffee at a Starbucks in Bellevue — the Silicon Forest heartland of Amazon and Microsoft — Taylan and Shailesh open ChatGPT mid-project, get three mixed answers, and have the lightbulb moment: the technology is racing ahead, but leadership hasn’t caught up. That conversation became a shared OneDrive doc. That doc became this book.

Nov 2024 — The Preparation

Learning the Craft

Both enrolled at Stanford to learn the tricks of the trade — a course on book writing. Learning the discipline of the craft before putting a single chapter to paper.

Mar 2025 — The Research

50+ Research Papers & Leader Interviews

50+ research papers and interviews with leaders across industries and geographies. Three recurring archetypes emerge: the Amplifier, the Adapter, and the Avoider — the DNA of the L1/L2/L3 framework.

Jun 2025 — Stress-Testing in the Field

The Birth of Bob & Alice

Ideation sessions, Otter.AI capturing every spark, and all the tools to put ideas into words. Bob and Alice are born — two archetypes who would bring the framework to life on every page.

Sep 2025 — Manuscript in Motion

AI Supporting the Narrative

Microsoft Word, Notion (research), Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google, Grammarly (the grammar police) — and our editors at Lincoln Publisher, NY. Every chapter was written, challenged, rewritten.

Apr 2026 — The Launch

Into Your Hands

Final manuscript. Design. Podcast. The assessment app. The website. Now in your hands.

Our Toolkit

Built With These

The tools that powered our research, writing, and launch.

Notion

Research & Structure

Our entire research database, interview notes, and chapter outlines lived here. The backbone of the manuscript.

Claude AI

AI Writing Partner

Used for research synthesis, exploring counterarguments, and drafting section structures. A true co-thinker.

ChatGPT

Ideation & Review

Stress-tested frameworks, generated alternative perspectives, helped us find blind spots in our arguments.

Perplexity

Deep Research

Real-time research and source verification throughout the writing process. Invaluable for fast, accurate fact-checking.

Google Workspace

Collaboration

Docs for co-writing, Sheets for tracking research sources, Meet for weekly author syncs across time zones.

Miro

Visual Frameworks

Every visual framework in the book was designed here first. The L1/L2/L3 model map, the Gravity Wheel — all Miro.

Grammarly

Polish & Clarity

Final pass on every chapter. Ruthless about clarity, readability, and eliminating jargon.

Research Network

Direct access to thousands of leaders for informal research conversations, feedback on early frameworks, and community building.

A Personal Note

Why We Had to Write This

We didn’t set out to write a business book. We set out to answer a question that kept us up at night.

The leaders we admired most — the ones who made rooms feel different when they walked in, who inspired loyalty without demanding it, who navigated uncertainty with quiet confidence — they all had something the rest were searching for. We called it Gravity.

This book is our attempt to bottle that quality. To give you a framework for finding your own gravitational center before the next wave of disruption arrives. Because it will arrive. And when it does, no AI tool will save you. Only your gravity will.

— Taylan & Shailesh

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