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By:

Bhalchandra Chorghade

11 August 2025 at 1:54:18 pm

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker,...

Healing Beyond the Clinic

Dr Kirti Samudra “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.” This thought by Mother Teresa finds reflection in the life of Panvel-based diabetologist Dr Kirti Samudra, who has spent decades caring not only for her family but also thousands of patients who see her as their guide. As we mark International Women’s Day, stories like hers remind us that women of substance often shape society quietly through compassion, resilience and dedication. Doctor, mother, homemaker, mentor and philanthropist — Dr Samudra has balanced many roles with commitment. While she manages a busy medical practice, her deeper calling has always been service. For her, medicine is not merely a profession but a responsibility towards the people who depend on her guidance. Nagpur to Panvel Born and raised in Nagpur, Dr Samudra completed her medical education there before moving to Mumbai in search of better opportunities. The early years were challenging. With determination, she and her husband Girish Samudra, an entrepreneur involved in underwater pipeline projects, chose to build their life in Panvel. At a time when the town was still developing and healthcare awareness was limited, she decided to make it both her workplace and home. What began with modest resources gradually grew into a trusted medical practice built on long-standing relationships with patients. Fighting Diabetes Recognising the growing threat of diabetes, Dr Samudra dedicated her career to treating and educating patients about the disease. Over the years, she has registered nearly 30,000 patients from Panvel and nearby areas. Yet she believes treatment alone is not enough. “Diabetes is a lifelong disease. Medicines are important, but patient education is equally critical. If people understand the condition, they can manage it better and prevent complications,” she says. For more than 27 years, she has organised an Annual Patients’ Education Programme, offering diagnostic tests at concessional rates and sessions on lifestyle management. Family, Practice With her husband frequently travelling for business, much of the responsibility of raising their two children fell on Dr Samudra. Instead of expanding her practice aggressively, she kept it close to home and adjusted her OPD timings around her children’s schedules. “It was not easy,” she recalls, “but I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as a mother while continuing to serve my patients.” Beyond Medicine Today, Dr Samudra also devotes time to social initiatives through the Bharat Vikas Parishad, where she serves as Regional Head. Her projects include  Plastic Mukta Vasundhara , which promotes reduced use of single-use plastic, and  Sainik Ho Tumchyasathi , an initiative that sends Diwali  faral  (snack hamper) to Indian soldiers posted at the borders. Last year alone, 15,000 boxes were sent to troops. Despite decades of service, she measures success not in wealth but in goodwill. “I may not have earned huge money,” she says, “but I have earned immense love and respect from my patients. That is something I will always be grateful for.”

The Pace And Pressure Paradox

When a founder’s speed becomes the team’s anxiety

Some workdays don’t derail because of workload. They derail because of pace. At The Workshop … the same growing design firm readers will remember from earlier chapters … the day didn’t start with tasks or priorities. It started with Rohit’s walk.


By 9:10 a.m., the team already knew what kind of day it would be.


Not from the sprint board. Not from Slack. Just from the way Rohit entered the room with fast steps, tight voice, eyes already three decisions ahead. He wasn’t upset. He wasn’t angry.


He was simply moving fast — the only speed many founders know when the stakes rise. But speed creates signals. And at The Workshop, the signal was unmistakable: “Brace yourselves.”


The Sprint That Went Sideways

Here’s what happened in the first ten minutes:

  • Aman started defending tasks no one had questioned.

  • Priya clipped her sentences short, afraid long explanations might trigger scrutiny.

  • Meera shuffled her notes, rehearsing answers no one had asked for.

  • Two interns opened Figma reflexively … even though the meeting had nothing to do with design.


Nobody said the words. But everybody understood the agenda: Survive the founder’s tempo.


This is the heart of the Pace & Pressure Paradox: Leaders feel urgency. Teams experience anxiety. Founders feel the push of customers, deadlines, and cash flow. Teams feel the push of emotion, tone, and unpredictability.


Passion Like Pressure

To Rohit, urgency meant momentum. To the team, urgency meant something might be wrong. Because when leaders operate at high emotional speed, teams don’t interpret velocity as enthusiasm … they interpret it as evaluation. In scaling companies, urgency tastes like crisis even when it’s not. What begins as passion in the founder quietly becomes pressure in the team. And the workplace becomes synchronized not to systems… but to mood.


Pattern 1: When Urgency Becomes the Default Setting

Urgency works beautifully in short bursts. But when everything is urgent, nothing feels safe.


Inside teams, this shows up as:

  • Work becoming reactive

  • Planning becoming optional

  • Delegation becoming chaotic

  • Reflection becoming a luxury

  • Calm weeks feeling suspicious


At The Workshop, urgency had become structural. And structural urgency always leads to exhaustion. Founders celebrate speed. Teams survive it. Until they can’t.

 

Pattern 2: The Mood-Driven Company

Most organisations don’t run on processes. They run on emotional weather. And the founder becomes the climate. At The Workshop, there were three seasons:

  1. Clear Skies: Rohit upbeat, team relaxed

  2. Pressure Winds: Rohit stressed, team cautious

  3. High Alert: Rohit intense, team silent


People began calibrating behavior based on Rohit’s facial expression, not the sprint plan. Speak less. Move faster. Ask nothing. Avoid friction. Stay invisible. They weren’t managing work. They were managing the boss. Once that shift occurs, performance stops being system-driven. It becomes emotion-driven. And nothing slows a company faster than emotional governance.


Pattern 3: The Aggression–Passivity Cycle

Founders rarely see this. Teams live it.


The cycle looks like this:

Phase 1: Overdrive

The team mirrors the boss’s intensity.


Phase 2: Silent Compliance

They stop pushing back. Execution becomes obedient, not intelligent.


Phase 3: Passive Breakpoint

People lose nuance. Creativity collapses. Ownership shrinks. The founder sees this slowdown and thinks, “They’ve lost energy.” The team sees the founder’s speed and thinks, “We’ve lost permission.” Both are wrong. Both are right. That’s what makes this paradox so expensive.


Case Study: The Agency Pitch Night

A creative agency we worked with experienced the same spiral. The founder burst into a pitch room at 7:45 p.m.: “We need to redo this deck. The client won’t get it.” Three designers, two strategists, one copywriter … everyone leapt into panic execution. At 11 p.m., the founder casually reversed course: “Let’s go with the old version.”


The team didn’t feel relief. They felt whiplash. Two people quietly began job-hunting the next week. It wasn’t the workload. It was the volatility.


Case Study: The Logistics Ops Escalation

In a logistics firm, a six-hour delay led to a founder shouting: “Fix it now!”


No one clarified priorities. No one asked what “fix” meant. Everyone sprinted. By morning, 42 orders were mishandled. Speed didn’t solve the problem. Speed multiplied it.


Why Scaling Makes This Paradox Stronger

At 10 people, the founder’s pace is inspiring.

At 30, it becomes confusing.

At 50, destabilizing.


Because: Speed stops being charismatic and it becomes chaotic. Teams confuse urgency with crisis. Leaders confuse anxiety with disengagement. Founders often burn out teams long before teams burn out founders. Not from workload but from emotional velocity.


The real cost isn’t fatigue. It’s strategic shallowness. Companies become excellent at reacting and terrible at thinking.

 

The Real Paradox

A leader’s pace is their superpower. Inside a team, it becomes their shadow.


What energizes a founder destabilizes a team. What feels natural to a boss feels like pressure to everyone else. That’s the Pace & Pressure Paradox:

One person’s urgency becomes everyone else’s uncertainty.


(The writer is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. She writes about the human mechanics of scaling where workplace behaviour quietly shapes business outcomes.)

 

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