For Siddhartha Pahwa—chief executive officer of Meru Cab Co. Pvt. Ltd—the best book on leadership is The Bhagavad Gita. For Pahwa, the Hindu sacred text is a rich source of leadership principles that he adopts in his life.
The Bhagavad Gita, which contains some 700 verses, is the discourse spoken by Krishna to warrior Arjuna in the epic Mahabharata.
Pahwa says he has read the book multiple times, and each time he learns something new. “There are basically three principles that I follow from The Gita,” he says.
“The first is that our responsibility is to do what is right; so in my case, I have to do what is right for my organization, in taking decisions which are right in the long term,” he adds.
The second leadership lesson Pahwa has learnt from The Gita is that one should do things today rather than keep them for tomorrow.
Speedy execution is something that this book has taught Pahwa, and this is very important in the services industry, according to him. “The faster you execute things, the better is the result,” he says.
