I received Gita for the CEO from a friend, and it turned out to be a page-turner packed with wisdom! The book draws lessons from the Bhagavad Gita, presenting them in a modern corporate context to address leadership, decision-making, and personal growth.

Ten Sutras from Bhagavad Gita for Leadership Excellence

1. Be adaptable: Don’t hold on to the things that hold us back. Embrace the learning opportunities present in every situation. In contemporary times, adaptability is even more critical as technology accelerates change in the world around us.
2. Be visionary: Don’t let what we want now come in the way of what we truly aspire to achieve. Go beyond stereotyped definitions of success that choke human potential, and tap into the full range of abilities at our command. Remember, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
3. Be bold: Even if we have to live with fear, we don’t have to live in fear. Too much fear makes us spineless and paralyzed, while too little fear makes us foolhardy and reckless. Fear subordinated to a higher vision fosters courage and purpose, which is what we should strive for.
4. Be mindful: Identify our emotions; don’t identify with them. Observe the moods and impulses that could sabotage our plans, and explore ways to discipline the mind. Mindfulness involves three steps:
   • Awareness: Being conscious of our situations, bodily sensations, and emotions.
   • Purposefulness: Clearly understanding what truly matters to us.
   • Thoughtfulness: Objectively evaluating and understanding external and internal events.
5. Take responsibility: Our actions matter, even when they don’t seem to. Karma reflects the sum total of our past actions, good and bad. A portion of this karma combines with our present actions to shape outcomes. The Mahabharata condemns using destiny as an excuse for passivity. While we are the makers of our destiny, we are not its masters, as outcomes depend on factors beyond our control.
6. Watch our words: Be empathetic and emphatic; communicate with words that are sensitive and sensible. Use the power of words to build bridges, not walls.
7. Don’t lose perspective: Even when life determines our problems, we determine their size. Three insights to keep perspective:
   • Be stoic without eternalizing problems.
   • Leverage the power of humility.
   • Tap into tolerance to stay on track.
8. Be grateful: What we have is God’s gift to us; what we do with it is our gift to God. Even if we can’t be grateful for all situations, we can be grateful in all situations. Leaders can work with motivations such as fear, desire, duty, or love. Love is the highest motivation, where one is deeply fascinated by their work and considers it a form of worship.
9. Prioritize self-care: We are our first asset and should rejuvenate ourselves by connecting with the infinite reservoir of strength within. Negative emotions like irritation, frustration, and envy can block us from effectively using our intelligence. We can overcome them and reconnect with our potential by:
   • Strengthening conviction through association: Learn and remain optimistic by associating with a guru, coach, or friends who create a positive environment.
   • Sharpening intelligence with books: In an age of information overload, reading helps separate the essential from the peripheral.
   • Sonic spirituality: Meditation and connecting with our inner self foster resilience and clarity.
10. Be resilient: Hold your plans lightly and your purpose tightly. Never lose heart. Stay focused on a higher vision and purpose.

Yoga: Connecting with Higher Consciousness

The book also discusses yoga, which means “to connect.” It is a system designed to connect human consciousness with divine consciousness. The Bhagavad Gita outlines four types of yoga:

• Karma-yoga: Connecting through action.
• Jnana-yoga: Connecting through knowledge.
• Dhyana-yoga: Connecting through meditation.
• Bhakti-yoga: Connecting through devotion.

While yoga is often equated with meditation, that is just one aspect, represented by dhyana-yoga.

Gita for the CEO offers timeless wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita, reimagined for the modern corporate leader. Through ten actionable principles and the concept of yoga, the book inspires readers to lead with adaptability, mindfulness, gratitude, and resilience. It emphasizes a balance between achieving external success and cultivating inner strength, providing leaders with a roadmap for personal and professional excellence.

I wrapped up 2024 by completing the book The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. This insightful read explores the secrets of highly successful groups, examining the dynamics that foster trust, cooperation, and collaboration. It highlights three foundational elements for creating cohesive and thriving cultures: building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose.

Build safety: Building safety is akin to a fluid, improvisational skill—much like passing a soccer ball to teammates during a game. It involves recognizing patterns, reacting quickly, and delivering the right signals at the right time.

• The good apples: A single positive, proactive individual within a group can act as a catalyst for trust and collaboration, shielding the team from negativity and fostering collective success.
• Signal that we are close, we are safe, we share a future: As a leader, be intentional about sending these messages to the team continuously.
• How to build belonging? Build relationships by consistently delivering small, authentic signals of care, trust, and inclusion
• How to design belonging? Craft deliberate systems, rituals, and structures that reinforce group identity and foster a deep, enduring sense of unity and shared purpose
• Ideas for action:
  • Overcommunicate your listening (through body language, asking questions and paraphrasing)
  • Spotlight your fallibility early-on (especially if you are a leader)
  • Embrace the messenger
  • Preview future connection
  • Overdo thank-yous
  • Be painstaking in the hiring process
  • Eliminate bad apples
  • Create safe, collision-rich spaces
  • Make sure everyone has a voice
  • Pickup trash
  • Capitalize on threshold moments
  • Avoid giving sandwich feedback
  • Embrace fun

Share vulnerability: Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway through which trusting cooperation is built.

• Embrace the vulnerability loop: Institute After Action Reviews (AAR) and BrainTrust meetings where all team members candidly share their learnings, feedback and observations.
• Ideas for action:
  • Make sure the leader is vulnerable first and often
  • Overcommunicate expectations
  • Deliver the negative stuff in-person
  • When forming new groups, focus on two critical moments – the first vulnerability and the first disagreement
  • Listen like a trampoline
  • In conversation, resist the temptation to reflectively add value
  • Use candor generating practices like AARs, BrainTrusts and Red Teaming.
  • Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty
  • Embrace the discomfort
  • Align language with action
  • Build a wall between performance review and professional development
  • Use flash mentoring
  • Make the leader occasionally disappear

Establish purpose: The difference with successful cultures seems to be that they use the crisis to crystallize their purpose. When leaders of those groups reflect on failures later, they express gratitude for those moments, as painful as they were, because they were the crucible that helped the group discover what it could be.

• Name and rank our priorities
• Be ten times as clear about our priorities as we think we should be
• Figure out where our group aims for proficiency and where it aims for creativity:
  • Proficiency: Skills of proficiency are about doing a task the same way, every single time delivering machine-like reliability. They tend to apply in domains in which the goal behaviors are clearly defined, such as service. Building purpose to perform these skills is like building a vivid map with spotlight on the goal and providing crystal-clear directions to the checkpoints along the way. Ways to do that include:
    • Provide clear, accessible models of excellence
    • Provide high-repetition, high-feedback training
    • Build vivid, memorable rules of thumb (if X, then Y)
    • Spotlight and honor the fundamentals of the skill
  • Creativity: Creative skills are about empowering a group to do the hard work of building something that has never existed before. Generating purpose in these areas is like supplying an expedition – provide support, fuel and tools to serve as a protective presence that empowers the team doing the work. Ways to do that include:
    • Keenly attend to team composition and dynamics
    • Define, reinforce and relentlessly protect the team’s creative autonomy
    • Make it safe to fail and to give feedback
    • Celebrate hugely when the group takes initiative
• Embrace the use of catchphrases
• Measure what really matters
• Use artifacts
• Focus on bar setting behaviors

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle reveals that the key to building successful groups lies in fostering safety, embracing vulnerability, and crystallizing purpose. By creating environments where individuals feel valued and secure, encouraging open and candid exchanges, and aligning actions with a shared mission, we can unlock the full potential of teams. Whether in professional settings or personal endeavors, this book provides actionable insights to cultivate a culture of trust, collaboration, and success.