Seeing the Real from the Unreal: Leadership Insights from Geeta Chapter 2, Verse 2.16 for Project Managers

Introduction

In Chapter 2, Verse 2.16 of the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna shares a profound truth about distinguishing between the real and the unreal. This teaching is both timeless and practical, guiding us to focus on what truly matters. The verse reads:

“????? ??????? ???? ?????? ??????? ???? ??????? ????????????????????????????????????"

(Nā?hato vidyate bhāvo nābhāvo vidyate sata?, Ubhayor api d?i?h?o ’nta? tvanayos tattva-dar?hibhi?.)

Translation: "The unreal has no existence, and the real never ceases to be; the seers of truth have concluded the same about both."

Krishna’s wisdom here encourages leaders to focus on what is real and sustainable rather than being distracted by temporary problems or illusions. For project managers, this translates into identifying and addressing core challenges rather than firefighting surface-level issues. It also involves prioritizing long-term goals over short-term chaos.

In this blog, we explore how this timeless wisdom applies to project management through an engaging, light-hearted story of a tricky GenAI deployment, where a shift in perspective helped a project manager steer the team toward success.

Scenario: The Phantom Bugs That Weren’t Real

It was 7 p.m. on a Thursday, and the office felt like a pressure cooker about to whistle. The GenAI model we had been fine-tuning for weeks—the crown jewel of our analytics project—was throwing errors faster than Priya, our backend engineer, could debug them.

I sat at my desk, staring at the error logs that blinked ominously on my screen like flashing sirens. Priya was pacing back and forth, her sneakers squeaking on the tiled floor.

“Tushar, these errors make no sense!” she muttered, flopping into the chair across from me. “One minute, the API calls are fine. The next, they break… and then magically fix themselves. Are we debugging ghosts now?”

Karan, our DevOps lead, chimed in with a grin. “It’s probably some ancient curse. Did someone forget to sacrifice a server to the cloud gods?”

I chuckled at his joke, but the issue was serious. The client demo was the next day, and every hour spent chasing these phantom bugs was an hour we weren’t preparing the stable build.

Krishna’s teaching from Chapter 2, Verse 2.16 echoed in my mind: Focus on the real; don’t get distracted by the unreal.I realized we were wasting time tackling surface-level errors without addressing the core issue.

Key Challenge

The main challenge was identifying the root cause of the intermittent bugs. The team was caught up in chasing temporary fixes without understanding the underlying problem—a common scenario when deadlines loom large and stress levels run high.

The Turning Point

I called the team into the war room with one agenda: stop firefighting and start investigating.

“Alright, team,” I said, leaning against the whiteboard, marker in hand. “Let’s stop reacting to the errors. Karan, can you check the logs for patterns? Priya, focus on testing a smaller, stable dataset to isolate where the pipeline breaks. Let’s look for what’s real instead of chasing ghosts.”

Karan nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense. We’re spinning up massive resources without checking what’s consistent.”

Over the next few hours, the team worked methodically. Karan discovered that a misconfigured auto-scaling rule on the cloud servers was causing the intermittent spikes. Priya validated a smaller dataset, confirming that the model was fine—it just couldn’t handle the load when unnecessary jobs piled up.

By midnight, we had a clean, stable build running. The bugs weren’t bugs at all—they were symptoms of an overloaded pipeline. When we demoed the solution the next day, the client praised not just the performance but the efficiency gains we achieved.

Personal Reflection

This experience reinforced the importance of distinguishing between surface-level issues and root causes. As project managers, it’s easy to get caught up in the noise—fixing what seems urgent but not addressing what’s important. By focusing on the real problem, we not only stabilized the project but also improved our processes.

Main Argument

Krishna’s wisdom in Verse 2.16 is a call for leaders to focus on the essential and enduring rather than being distracted by temporary chaos. Project managers must develop the ability to distinguish between symptoms and root causes to lead their teams effectively.

Actionable Framework for Project Managers

1. Pause and Reflect: Step back when chaos arises to identify what is truly causing the issue.
2. Prioritize Root Cause Analysis (RCA): Avoid quick fixes; dig deeper to uncover the real problem.
3. Allocate Focused Resources: Assign team members to investigate and validate the core issue.
4. Document Learnings: Capture insights for future projects to prevent similar challenges.
5. Communicate Transparently: Keep stakeholders informed about the real issue and progress toward resolution.

In another cloud deployment project, intermittent failures caused unnecessary rework. By focusing on RCA, we identified a single overlooked configuration parameter, which saved us hours of debugging and stabilized the system.        

As Krishna teaches, the unreal has no lasting value, and the real never ceases to exist. For project managers, this means focusing on what truly matters—the root causes, long-term goals, and sustainable solutions—to lead their teams through challenges with clarity and purpose.

“True leadership lies in distinguishing between noise and necessity, and acting on what matters most.”