What birdwatching taught Diageo India’s Praveen Someshwar about leadership

As the year drew to a close, Praveen Someshwar, the managing director and chief executive of Diageo India, stepped away from the cadence of corporate life in an unexpected way: by standing still.

In a year-end reflection, Someshwar described spending time in nature, away from meetings and metrics, during what he called his first dedicated bird-watching experience. The exercise, he wrote, demanded patience rather than performance — an observation that echoed the challenges of leadership in an era defined by speed.

Birds, he noted, do not appear on command. They require waiting, attention and presence. Hours of silence, punctuated by rustling leaves or the distant call of a kingfisher, became an exercise in process over outcome. The subtle camouflage of a tailor bird or the fleeting moment of a sighting, he wrote, highlighted how much is missed when attention is fragmented.

The experience offered more than calm. What lingered most, Someshwar wrote, was the ecosystem itself — a single fig tree supporting a dense network of life, from pollinators to predators. The image served as a metaphor for interdependence, a reminder that progress, whether in nature or in organisations, is rarely linear or solitary. Balance, not acceleration, sustains systems over time.

The journey extended beyond forests. Travel through India’s countryside and villages — simple homes, children flying kites, unguarded warmth — provided a counterpoint to urban intensity. The contrast, he suggested, was grounding. Purpose and joy, the post reflected, are often embedded in the ordinary rather than the exceptional.

Shared with family and loved ones, the experience became not just restorative but clarifying. Leadership lessons, Someshwar implied, do not arrive only through boardroom debate or quarterly results. Sometimes they emerge through stillness, curiosity and connection — qualities that are increasingly scarce in modern executive life.

As corporations confront a year shaped by volatility, regulation and changing consumer behaviour, such reflections stand apart from the usual year-end proclamations of growth and ambition. Someshwar framed the transition into 2026 not as a sprint forward, but as a recalibration — anchored in patience, perspective and renewed awareness.

It was, he wrote, a fitting way to begin the new year.