My blood pressure, taken by a doctor friend over tea. We were all close to fifty. I was a Senior Director with clients in three geographies, sleeping three to four hours a night.
The noise had a number.
Everything I ask of a leader, I asked of myself first.
In January 2017 I left corporate life to coach. What follows is the method, in five acts, and the first person it was tried on.
I SuperpositionII ObservationIII InterferenceIV CollapseV Commitment
From a medical representative’s bag to the boardroom
SudhakarReddy Gade
Executive coach
Author
Independent director
Guiding leaders from inner noise to outer impact.
Scroll to begin
Act I
Superposition
Before it is measured, a particle holds every possible state at once.
Twenty-two and a half years. Many selves, held at once.
A medical representative in Hyderabad with a bag of samples. A manager of managers. The one sent in to rescue an account, and the one asked to build another. Each role was a state I could have settled into for good.
1994
Hyderabad · Bliss Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals
The bag
Medical representative. Before the internet and the mobile phone, the rep was how a doctor heard about new research. Knowledge first; transaction second.
1995
Hyderabad · Chennai · Raptakos Brett, to 2005
Representative to zonal head
Area manager, then head of United Andhra, where I launched the Eidikos division. Then Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Attrition down from 27% to 15%.
2005
Chennai · Bharat Serums, Wallace
Head of South India
Then a division launched from nothing: Wallace Lifestyle, in Tamil Nadu.
2006
Chennai · IQVIA, to 2008
The data years
Field operations for South India. Data accuracy from 62% to 89%. India’s first nursing-home census.
2008
Pune · PharmaForce International
From scratch
A knowledge-process business built from zero. The first project delivered in thirty days.
2009
Chennai · Tata Consultancy Services
The rescue
A $25M account on the verge of client pullback. Gross margin from 27% to 74%.
2012
Tata Consultancy Services
The first coaching
TCS nominated me for its Leader as a Coach programme. The first time I sat across from someone and only asked questions.
2014
Pune · Tata Consultancy Services
The build
An account from $80K to $30M by the time I left. The team from 15 to 125.
2015
Mumbai · NeuroLeadership Institute
The first accreditation
Results Associate Certificate of Coaching, 8 to 10 July 2015. The same year, the Senior Leadership Programme at IIM Ahmedabad.
2016
Mumbai · Course5i
Senior Director, Operations
UK, US and India operations. Three to four hours of sleep. Then the reading at the doctor friend’s house.
19942016
In the room
Most leaders who come to me are here: capable in many directions, committed to none yet. The work begins by holding every option in view, without hurrying to pick one.
Act II
Observation
To measure a system is to change it. No observation is neutral.
What is seen accurately begins to change.
January 2017, Mumbai. Nirvedha began. A technology leader gave me his own brief in the first ten minutes, before I could ask:
“I need to figure out how to stop making people feel small when I disagree with them.”
He did not lack awareness. He lacked a practice for closing the gap between knowing and changing.
So we observe, carefully. The leader’s view, the stakeholders’ view, a benchmark. I trained in Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Centered Coaching that June because it puts the people around a leader inside the measurement. What is said in the room stays there. No coaching client is named, anywhere.
In the room: a leadership workshop at NISM
“The real me leads to real success”
~6,000
leaders reached through programmes, workshops and talks
180+
unique senior leaders coached one to one since 2017
₹32Cr
added to combined client compensation, USD $3.8M+
15
DOI-assigned research papers, and six books
Nirvedha records, January 2017 onwards. The ₹32 Crore is across the 103-leader promotion cohort. How each number is arrived at, and the claims withdrawn for being unsupportable, are on Evidence and methodology.
41runs logged, 2017
→
144runs logged, 2019
I put myself under the same observation. Every run logged from 2017. By February 2019, 35 km on the Tata Ultra at Lonavala, the longest run I have recorded. What is measured honestly starts to move.
24 February 2019 · Tata Ultra · 35 km
Before dawn, in the hills above Lonavala.
Distance
35.5 km
Elapsed
4:46:33
Climbing
857 m
Start
04:30
The longest run I have recorded. Every kilometre and every heartbeat, observed.
km 0elapsed 0:00:00altitude – mheart rate – bpmas recorded on Strava
The architecture of every engagement. Twelve months, built on a six-month sprint, with stakeholders calibrated monthly.
02
N-GAGE
Every goal split into weighted skill areas, scored by self, peers and benchmark into a Role Readiness Index.
03
LENS
Latent Expression of the Natural Self. A co-created diagnostic read through four channels, published as a paper.
04
Quantum Wave Coaching Method™
The five acts on this page: superposition, observation, interference, collapse, commitment. Told as a fable in The Frozen Particle.
Act III
Interference
When waves meet, crest on crest grows stronger and crest on trough falls silent. The pattern is the whole story.
Two sources. Move your pointer to move one of them.
On the road, the second voice always speaks.
Somewhere past three hundred kilometres there are two waves in you: the one that wants to finish and the one that wants to stop. Headwind, ghat, sleep, a failing knee. You do not silence the second voice. You learn which way the pattern is going.
26 February 2022 · Brevet · 600 km, solo
Hyderabad to Adilabad, and back. Alone.
Distance
615.4 km
Elapsed
38:38:05
Climbing
3,917 m
At the start
19°C, mist
The ride that began the Super Randonneur series. The new bicycle was one day old.
“Believing is achieving.”My caption on Strava that day
km 0elapsed 0:00:00altitude – mas recorded on Strava
Super Randonneur · 2022
Four brevets in one season. Four frames.
600 kmFebruary · solo200 kmAudax Club Parisien300 kmApril400 kmJuly · into the wind
8 Mar 2020
Day 1
The first ride I logged.
1 Nov 2020
100KM
The first hundred in a day.
21 Nov 2020
1,203M UP
A night ride from Mumbai over the Bhor Ghat towards Pune. 129.7 km.
21 Feb 2021
200KM
My first brevet. Matheran, the Bor Ghat, Tiger Point. Twelve hours seventeen minutes.
25 Feb 2022
−1DAY
The first ride on a new bicycle. The day before the six hundred.
26 Feb 2022
600KM SOLO
Thirty-eight hours, thirty-eight minutes.
Believing is achieving.
16 Jul 2022
400KM
Two hundred kilometres of it into a headwind. The series complete.
Now I can call myself SR.
8 Apr 2023
200KM
Rode it to help a first-timer, Mr Narasimha Rao, finish his first brevet.
Drag the film
Kilometres ridden, each yearFrom Strava · 2020 to 2025
4,0002,000
2020 · 1,652 km · 41 rides
2021 · 2,551 km · 61 rides
5,712 km2022 · 5,712 km · Super Randonneur, the Deccan Cliffhanger
2023 · 3,539 km · the Himalaya, then the knee
2024 · 718 km · the knee
1,348 km2025 · 1,348 km · rebuilding
202020212022202320242025
Show as a table
Year
Kilometres
Rides
2020
1,652
41
2021
2,551
61
2022
5,712
104
2023
3,539
96
2024
718
27
2025
1,348
52
In the room
A leader carries the same two waves: the intention and the habit. Coaching is where they are made to meet in the open, so both of us can see which one is winning.
Act IV
Collapse
At the moment of measurement, every possibility becomes one outcome. A commitment is that moment, chosen.
The method, on someone who had never cycled seriously.
In 2020 I began coaching Niharika Reddy, a Class 10 student with no fitness background. Twenty-five kilometres. Then fifty. Then a hundred in a day.
In February 2022, after I had moved to Hyderabad, she rode from Kharghar to Hyderabad with her father and three friends: 657 km in three days. It was a ride I had always wanted to make.
Then we raced together, as a two-person team. At the Deccan Cliffhanger we finished first in category, inside the 31-hour cut-off by five minutes.
The next August, in the Himalaya, we crossed the line in 38 hours 53 minutes, inside the 39-hour cut-off. A 45-minute penalty for our crew made the official time 39:35. We finished the race. We did not finish it in time. I have never described that as a loss.
First rides202025KM
Doubled202050KM
A hundred in a day2020100KM
Kharghar to HyderabadFebruary 2022 · three days657KM
The Deccan Cliffhanger · first in categoryPune to Goa · November 2022 · 30:54:44643KM
The Great Himalayan Ultra · finishedLeh, Drass, Thiksey, Leh · August 2023 · 38:53 on the road, 39:35 after a crew penalty600KM
T-261, Team Praturti. The race card, Deccan Cliffhanger 2022
Leh, before the start
A pass on the way to Drass
A girl who had never cycled seriously rode 600 km through the Himalaya.
In the room
On the mountain the wave collapsed to an outcome we did not choose. We finished anyway. Commitment is the one act a coach cannot do for you, and the one I wrote a paper about.
Before the Deccan Cliffhanger I wrote the crew brief by hand: Kolhapur to Belgaum, the narrow road after, the Amboli descent, every turn where the vehicle must not lose the rider.
26 November 2022 · The Deccan Cliffhanger · with Niharika
Pune to Goa, over the Western Ghats.
Race distance
643 km
Official time
30:54:44
Climbing
3,609 m
Result
First in category
Strava recorded 618.6 km of the 643 km course. The last ghat drops to the sea.
“Awesome ride by my partner Niharika, kudos to her grit and energy, who climbed the ghat Khambatki like an ordinary hillock.”My caption on Strava, about Niharika
km 0elapsed 0:00:00altitude – mas recorded on Strava
26 August 2023 · The Great Himalayan Ultra · with Niharika
Leh to Drass and back, above four thousand metres.
Race distance
600 km
On the road
38:53
Climbing
5,857 m
At the start
5.7°C
Strava recorded 412.1 km of the 600: the watch and bike computer failed for part of the ride. Finished outside the cut-off after a 45-minute crew penalty.
“Having seen the mighty Himalayas we thought initially, can we complete this race?”My caption on Strava
km 0elapsed 0:00:00altitude – mas recorded on Strava
Act V
Commitment
After collapse, a particle has a position. Now it can move with purpose.
1994The bagA medical representative in Hyderabad, waiting outside doctors’ rooms.
24 years
2018The boardA seat on the board of Savari Systems, through to its acquisition by Harman.
2017Certified Corporate DirectorIOD India
2018 – 2021Board of Savari SystemsAcquired by Harman
2020 –Certified Independent DirectorIICA, on the independent directors’ databank
In 2023 the knee gave way after the Himalaya. I am rebuilding. The commitment did not end at the finish line.
Dead hang1 min 30 s
Leg press180 kg
Deadlift50 kg
In the room
A choice, held long enough, becomes a self. That is what the twelve months are for.
Six books. The practice, written down.
From awareness, to self-mastery, to systemic change, to living with new technology, to the coaching room itself.
180+ senior leaders, who remain unnamedWhat is said in the room stays in the room.
Filmed on location
Hyderabad · Chennai · Pune · Mumbai · the Bhor Ghat · Pune to Goa · Leh to Drass
Certified
Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered CoachingCertified Coach, 13 June 2017
Recognised
Thinkers360: Top 10 in Behavioural ScienceTop 25 in Careers and in Coaching · Thought Leader of the Year 2026, Honorable Mention
Formerly
Forbes Coaches Council, 2019 – 2020
In the boardroom
IOD India Certified Corporate Director · IICA Certified Independent Director
Photographs
From my own albums, my crew and fellow ridersThe Deccan Cliffhanger race card by Inspire India
Languages
English · Hindi · Telugu · Tamil
Not featured
An ICF credentialBy choice: out of the credential race, answerable to the leaders in the room.
Before helping others develop, you be the change.
Your turn
What would you hear if the noise stopped?
If that question stayed with you, write. The first conversation is thirty minutes, with no agenda and no slides, so both of us can decide whether the fit is real.
