A Culture of Coherence
Leadership through harmony...
New Delhi
In 2001, I established residence for several months in one of the most luxurious hotel in New Delhi: the Oberoi. That June morning, with temperatures already climbing above 100°F, I stood at its majestic entrance, waiting for a yellow and black Ambassador taxi, summoned by the chasseur, dressed in full Maharajah-era regalia.
After a short ride by the green of the golf club and the zoo, the impressive ruins of the old fort and the less picturesque power station by the Yamuna river, I arrived at my new workplace: the World Health Organization South East Asia Office.
I appeared relaxed, but inside, I knew this was one of the biggest professional gamble of my life. More than one person on the recruitment panel had doubts about my competence—and honestly, I didn’t blame them. I doubted myself.
WHO was never designed as an operational agency and its antiquated processes hindered the outcome of the department. I was hired for efficiency, to cut corners, to deliver results. Make the polio eradication campaigns in the 10 countries of the region a success.
At my very first staff meeting, I felt the heavy weight of expectation: surely I was due to present a bold, well-structured strategy to address our persistent challenges, not least of them, a chronic multi-million-dollar shortfall in our fundraising programs.
The truth, though, was I had no plan. No solutions. Not yet. And that wasn’t the point. I’d learned from consulting that you don’t come with answers; you trust the solutions are already there, just unseen. So instead of impressing everyone with a grand proposal, I asked a simple question:
"When was the last time you went home at 4pm?"
Officially, 4pm was our end-of-day. But nobody ever left on time. The culture, legacy of North American workaholism, revered long hours, weekend emails, slave-like availability. No one answered. Their faces said it all. No one could remember.
Then I made the first move:
"I want each of you to go home at 4pm at least once a week."
Silence. Disbelief. Maybe even suspicion.
My voice didn’t shake, but inside, I knew this was one big bet. I didn’t know if it would work. But I knew this: if I was going to succeed here, it had to be with a new story—one that went beyond logistics, budgets, or scorecards. A new story of how we could work together.
And in the land of “namaste” surely that story must begins with valuing people as whole beings. Trust, respect, and empowerment were to be the foundations of this new kind of leadership.
Newtonian Model
Most organizations still operate with an old Newtonian model: to move something, you must exert pressure on it. Stop the pressure and the movement stops. It's a system of sticks and carrots. Motivation is something you squeeze or entice out of people through deadlines and paychecks.
But honestly does it even work? For me, it never did. Push to get something and you’ll most likely get the opposite. So I asked: what if there's a path to even higher performance? And what if that path runs through personal fulfillment?
Then my role wasn’t to outdo my team at what they’d already mastered, it was to create the conditions that would make them better at what they did.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs offers a simple but powerful lens. At the lower levels, when a need is met, motivation decreases. I’m hungry, I eat, I stop thinking about food. But at the highest levels, the opposite happens:
The more I meet my needs for self-esteem, purpose, and self-actualization, the more I want of it. Motivation multiplies.
The more we feel seen, the more we want to contribute.
The more we feel aligned, the more energy flows.
The more we feel trusted, the more we become trustworthy.
This is the shift from a Newtonian model to a quantum model where fulfillment isn’t opposed to performance. It’s the engine.
I didn’t use those words at the time, but that’s exactly what I was sensing.
I wasn’t trying to motivate my team with external rewards. I was trying to nourish them form the inside.
I knew they could do the job, they’d been doing it for years. I just saw my role as supporting them to do it even better.
And that started with one simple act: showing them respect in its highest form.
Namaste!
Redefining Success
After a few months, my stress began to ease. I was still working a lot, maybe to compensate for the enormous responsibility I’d taken on, but the doubts had quieted. I knew we were going to make it.
And the rewards started showing up.
The quality of the work produced by our department spoke for itself. Other department intended to poach our best staff, offering higher salaries, enticing promotions, opportunities for upward mobility in the organization.
Most of them declined.
One person in HR even asked me, puzzled:
“What do you do to your staff that they don’t want promotions?”
It baffled other departments. But I understood.
They chose to stay in a place that fed them more than money and status. A place where they felt trusted, supported, and truly seen.
When people are nourished, they don’t need to be managed.
When their work provide the highest rewards, they don’t have to look elsewhere for satisfaction.
Later, the Director of Administration and Finance, by then a friendly colleague, took me aside and said:
“I didn’t think you would make it.”
He had the nobility to admit he had once doubted me. And the integrity to acknowledge that I had, in fact, succeeded.
It was not the praise that mattered most, but the confirmation of what I had sensed all along: in a large system, the best results don’t emerge from control, but from harmony.
Yes, I worked a lot. But I was fulfilled, by the team, by the trust, by the shared story we were creating together.
A story where people mattered.
A story where fulfillment bred loyalty.
A story where performance was a byproduct of belonging.
Something I said often, mostly in my head, since the culture wasn’t quite ready for this vocabulary:
“What would happen if you treated your employees like God?”
(Because they are 😉). And I could have added: Namaste!
Having Skin in the Game
It was not all harmony though, some people still wanted to prove my methods wrong. My efforts towards efficiency weren’t to everyone’s liking. At one point, the administration flagged a technical irregularity in how my main assistant had been recruited. They wanted her to resign and reapply.
But underneath, it was a maneuver to install someone else, someone controllable, more loyal to the system, and eventually to coerce me into the more normative processes of the organization.
I couldn’t afford to lose her. Not only she was absolutely brilliant and she had saved me more than once, but her departure would have meant a loss of trust and safety within the team.
So I walked into my boss’s office and said:
“If she goes, I go. You manage the fallout. It’s beyond my reach.”
He looked at me and knew I meant it. I was willing to walk away from everything, for the principle alone.
When you play this game, you have to walk your talk. You can’t bail at the first hindrance. Putting skin in the game was what truly mattered. The challenged worked, and my assistant stayed.
Sometimes, the only way to protect a culture of trust is to stake everything on it.
And that, to me, is what real respect looks like.
Final Test
December 2004. By then, I knew I’d be leaving New Delhi for Geneva in January. I was coasting, most processes were running smoothly, and the success of our department had earned me a new post at headquarters, helping to design the planning and strategy module for the new Oracle ERP system.
But on December 26th, at 5:30 a.m. Delhi time, a massive 9.3 magnitude earthquake, off the west coast of Sumatra, triggered a tsunami that devastated 14 countries, claimed over 230,000 lives, and displaced millions. One of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history.
I made one phone call and within hours, our entire team was back at work on a Sunday morning, without notice, without argument, without asking for extra pay. They came because they knew it mattered.
We did not lose time in negotiations over overtime compensation, we were operational instantly. That’s what happens when people are met in their humanity: they show up with everything they are.
It felt like a kind of parting gift. The ultimate recognition. A quiet nod from life itself. A goodbye wink that said: you trusted your intuition, you defended it, and it worked.
Not Everything Can Be Measured
In the end, did team members start going home at 4pm once a week?
Maybe they did. Maybe not. What matters is that it became possible. And that’s the real shift. That was never the true metric.
The danger of metrics is that we try to measure what we value,
but end up valuing what we measure.
It is difficult to measure harmony. Or coherence. Yet you can feel it. You just know when it’s there—and when it’s not.
What we created was a culture of trust, of belonging. A place where everyone gave their best, not because they were pressured, or blackmailed, or even asked, but because they wanted to.
And while I can take credit for some of that,
I want to give credit where it’s due: to the men who recruited me.
Bruce, who dropped the application on my desk in Geneva one late evening with a quiet, “Apply, please, and we’ll get you there.” A sentence full of unspoken meaning. Brent and Arun, who took a risk on me after that first interview.
Like many others before, they may have seen something I couldn’t yet see in myself.
The irony is obvious as I write these lines. They probably followed the same principle I would later apply. They valued me, trusted me, and with that fuel, they unlocked something deep within me. And it paid back. I owe them my gratitude.
A Culture of Coherence
What do you call a workplace where people show up without being asked? Where trust replaces control? Where fulfillment drives performance, and alignment births results?
I call it a culture of coherence.
It’s not a system. It’s not a strategy. It’s a field, a living, breathing organism where something deeper guides the way.
You can’t command it. You can only invite it.
It begins with a story. A story where people matter. Where needs aren’t hurdles, but doorways. Where leadership doesn’t push, it listens, trusts, and amplifies.
In that space, synchronicity is the norm. Things line up. Energy flows. People bring more than skill, they bring their soul.
And when that happens, infinite potential isn’t just possible.
It’s inevitable.
Namaste:
Meaning “ I bow to you” or “ I honor the divine in you”. When the One in me sees the One in you, we recognize the divine spark that unites us all. In that silent acknowledgment, there is no separation, only the shared truth of our being—timeless, boundless, and interconnected.
Synchronicity:
The simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related bit have no discernible causal connection (Carl Jung).
PS: In Service
After five years with WHO as a consultant advising field projects in Africa, the Middle East, and South-East Asia, I took on a new role in the SEA region, covering 10 countries—India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, North Korea, Maldives, and Bhutan—home to 1.9 billion people.
Our department focused on vaccines and immunizations, with the primary effort centered on eradicating polio. This involved large-scale campaigns using a safe, effective oral vaccine delivered to children.
My role encompassed finance, human resources, and strategic planning, with a significant focus on securing supplementary funding to support national initiatives. The budget was $300 million annually, with thousands of employees and millions of volunteers mobilized for the campaigns.
In a position where 25% of the world’s population would be affected by our decisions, the weight of responsibility was both humbling and overwhelming. To be entrusted with such a role, recognized for the impact of my work, was a powerful acknowledgment, yet it also brought a quiet sense of reverence for the lives at stake. In the face of such responsibility, I felt both deeply honored and profoundly humbled, aware that the true work was not about power or career, but being in service to something far greater than myself.
PS: “Change Your Story, Change The World” is a storytelling endeavor that looks deeply into the psyche that creates the stories we live by—with the intention to help us shape better stories, both personally and collectively.
Because the stories we tell are the reality we live.
This one landed at the perfect time for me in my life. Love ya Deva!
Loving the stories Deva. Keep going. Namaste brother 🙏