What if leadership wasn’t about moving faster, but about choosing the right direction, and having the patience to honor it?
Every January, the Indian sky answers that question for us.
Makar Sankranti arrives with colour, kites, laughter, sesame sweets, sugarcane, and a collective tilt of the head towards the sun. On the surface, it looks celebratory. But beneath the festivity lies one of our oldest cultural reminders: life moves in cycles, and wisdom lies in recognizing when it’s time to change direction.
Across India, the festival takes different names — Uttarayan, Pongal, Maghi — yet the essence remains unchanged. It marks the sun’s northward journey, a subtle but significant shift. Longer days. Returning warmth. A promise that what felt stalled will now, slowly, move forward.
What we often forget is that this is not just an astronomical event.
It is a leadership lesson embedded in ritual.
Direction Before Speed
In a world obsessed with momentum, Sankranti offers a counter-intuitive truth: Progress rarely begins with acceleration. It begins with alignment.
The sun does not rush. It turns.
That single shift of direction sets the stage for everything that follows. Harvest. Growth. Energy. Renewal. Leadership, at its most enduring, works the same way. When direction is right, even slow movement compounds. And when direction is wrong, speed only exhausts.
Presence Over Productivity
As someone who travels widely and works closely with leaders across cultures, I’ve noticed a shared paradox. We optimise relentlessly; our calendars, systems, outputs. Yet we yearn for meaning, grounding, and a sense of balance.
Sankranti is about timing. It arrives when winter loosens its grip, reminding us that rest is not a reward for productivity. You don’t rest only when you are done. Rest is a precondition for sustainable effort. The festival invites that pause and rest, not as indulgence, but as preparation.
In leadership terms, this is the discipline of presence and patience. You need to recognize when to stop reacting and pushing and start noticing and becoming aware.
Working With the Wind
Kites are not flown to fight the wind. They rise when they harness it, when the flyer understands it. This may be Sankranti’s most elegant metaphor. Progress does not come from force alone. Cooperation with people, with context, with timing, they all lead to the rise. Leaders who last and leaders who progress are those who don’t waste their energy to overpower resistance, they use it to further their rise.
Invisible Beginnings
Sankranti promises that meaningful change often begins invisibly, in your intent and actions.
Like the sun’s gradual turn northward, leadership renewal starts long before results show up. And when the direction is right, the journey unfolds with far less friction.
Perhaps that is why this festival has endured for centuries. It reminds us that renewal is deliberate and done over time, that it is almost invisible to those who only judge success by the final results. And that sometimes, the most powerful leadership move is not to push harder — but to realign, and begin again.
