Shirdi Sai Baba's two coins, and the price of a long bet

A fakir with no documented birth, no property and no written word left a teaching that fits in two words: faith and patience. Leaders who spend only one of those coins tend to lose both.

A young man under a neem tree, with no papers

Nobody knows where Shirdi Sai Baba was born, when, or to whom. His name, family and religion of birth are undocumented, and the claims made about them are contested. Devotee tradition, as kept by the Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust, says he was first seen in the Maharashtra village of Shirdi around 1854, a young man of about sixteen sitting under a neem tree. The spot is now called Gurusthan.

He left for a time and, around 1858, came back with the wedding party of Chand Patil's family. A local devotee, Mhalsapati, greeted him with the words "Ya Sai", and the name stayed. He settled in a ruined mosque that he called Dwarkamai, kept a sacred fire, the dhuni, burning there, and gave its ash, udi, to those who came.

The years that followed are marked by small, steady changes rather than any founding event. From 1909 he slept on alternate nights at the Chavadi, and arati worship was formalised from December that year. In 1912 his padukas were installed at Gurusthan and the renovation of Dwarkamai was completed. In 1915 a devotee, Gopalrao Booty, began building a wada, a large house, in the village.

Sai Baba took mahasamadhi on 15 October 1918, the day of Vijayadashami, and his body was interred in Booty's wada, which became the Samadhi Mandir. The Sansthan that manages it was formed with court approval in the early 1920s; sources give 1921 or 1922. He wrote nothing. His teachings come to us chiefly through the Shri Sai Satcharita, written in Marathi by the devotee Hemadpant, G. R. Dabholkar.

Hindus and Muslims both revere him, and his practice drew on bhakti and Sufi traditions alike. He is a different figure from Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi (1926–2011), with whom he is sometimes confused. For a leader, the striking fact is the absence of credentials. Everything Shirdi became grew from conduct observed over decades in one village.

Two coins, and why he would accept neither on its own

The heart of Sai Baba's teaching, as both the Sansthan and the Satcharita record it, is a pair of words: Shraddha and Saburi. Shraddha is faith. Saburi is patience. Devotees describe them as the two coins every seeker must offer.

The image of payment matters. A coin is spent, and something is given up when it is offered. Faith here costs the seeker their doubts; patience costs them their demand for a quick result. Sai Baba asked for both at once, and the pairing is the point. Faith that cannot wait turns into agitation. Patience that believes in nothing is only waiting.

Around that pair sit the other strands of his life. He told those who came that there is one Master, in the words the Sansthan gives as "Allah Malik", and that Ram and Rahim are one. He cooked and served food himself and asked devotees to feed the hungry. He lived in a mosque, begged for his food and owned almost nothing. He asked for complete trust in the guru and the letting go of pride.

Read together, these strands make the two coins easier to carry. Feeding people looks after those who wait alongside you. One Master for all keeps conviction from becoming a dividing line. Owning almost nothing removes the many small anxieties that make patience hard. The model in this chapter is built from exactly these pieces.

Radhabai's fast and the formula he would not sell

Devotees recount, from the Satcharita, the story of Radhabai Deshmukh, an elderly devotee who came to Shirdi wanting a mantra from Sai Baba, and fasted to force him to give her one.

It is a situation many leaders will recognise. Someone with a sincere wish applies pressure, and the pressure is aimed at extracting a formula: a phrase, a method, a shortcut that will deliver the result without the long work. Giving way would have been easy and kind in the short run.

Sai Baba did not give way. In the devotees' telling, he gently taught her that faith and patience mattered more than any formula. Shraddha and Saburi, the two words at the centre of his teaching, are tied in devotees' memory to this exchange.

Two details are worth noticing. He refused the demand and kept the person: the story is told as gentle teaching. And what he offered in place of the formula was harder to receive than a mantra, because it could not be used once and set aside. Faith and patience have to be practised every day, and nobody else can supply them on your behalf.

The AI shortcut and the two-coin test

Artificial intelligence has produced its own version of Radhabai's demand. Boards and teams want the formula: the tool, the vendor or the pilot that will turn into profit this year. The evidence so far suggests that formula is elusive.

The 2026 edition of McKinsey's State of AI survey finds that nearly nine in ten respondents report regular use of AI in at least one business function. Yet only 37 percent attribute at least some EBIT impact to AI use, about the same share as the previous year, and only 6 percent qualify as high performers. Adoption is wide and returns are thin. That is the territory where leaders lose their nerve.

Both failures are visible in it. A company with conviction and no patience launches a dozen AI pilots, judges them on one quarter and kills them before they can learn. A company with patience and no conviction waits to see what others do, and never commits enough to find out. The Faith–Patience Matrix names these as rash conviction and passive waiting.

There is evidence that the patient path pays. The McKinsey Global Institute's Corporate Horizon Index analysed 615 large and mid-cap US listed companies from 2001 to 2015, and found that from 2001 to 2014 the revenue of long-term firms cumulatively grew on average 47 percent more than the revenue of other firms, with earnings growing 36 percent more. The data is American and correlational, but its direction is clear. A leader who picks one AI bet, writes down why, and fixes the date it will be judged is spending both of Sai Baba's coins.

The WCRC Faith–Patience Matrix™

Created by Abhimanyu Ghosh · A proprietary model of Abhimanyu Ghosh and WCRC

WCRC calls this the WCRC Faith–Patience Matrix. It reads Shraddha and Saburi as two leadership capacities and plots them against each other, as the diagram above shows. Conviction without patience lands in the corner of rash conviction, where bets are abandoned at the first bad quarter. Patience without conviction lands in passive waiting. Neither in place is drift. The target is the upper right, faith with patience, supported by three further building blocks drawn from Sai Baba's life: feeding and sharing, one Master for all, and simplicity. The matrix is WCRC's interpretation for leaders; it is not endorsed by the Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust or any devotee body.

The Faith–Patience Matrix reads Sai Baba's two coins as two leadership capacities: Shraddha, deep conviction in a direction, and Saburi, the patience to let it mature. Conviction without patience burns out in rash moves; patience without conviction drifts into waiting. Leaders aim for both, kept simple, shared and open to all.

The building blocks

What a CEO spends: certainty in writing, and the right to panic

A chief executive who adopts the matrix gives up two comforts. The first is vagueness. Shraddha, in this model, means writing down the long-term bet and the reasons for it before the first setback arrives, so that conviction can be tested later against something more solid than memory. The playbook below starts exactly there.

The second is the right to panic. Saburi means fixing the date on which a bet will be judged, and declining to pull that date forward because a quarter disappoints. A review can move earlier when new evidence demands it. It does not move because a large shareholder is unhappy on a results call.

The habit that holds both together is simplicity. Sai Baba owned almost nothing, and the matrix asks leaders to hold few bets. A CEO with fifteen strategic priorities cannot be patient with any of them, because every one is competing for the same attention and money. Cutting the list is often the first real act of faith.

The blind spot lies in the word faith itself. The model is explicit that a call for faith in a strategy must never become a demand for loyalty to the leader. Sai Baba asked devotees for trust in the guru, but leadership in a company is a different relationship, and the matrix guards against confusing them. Conviction that cannot name the evidence that would prove it wrong has hardened into stubbornness, and patience that never reaches a decision is procrastination with a better name.

Founders and the corner called rash conviction

Founders live in the upper left of the matrix by temperament. They have more conviction than anyone around them, which is why they started the company, and they are often short of patience, because cash is short too.

The matrix leaves a founder's belief intact and asks for one bet, stated with its reasons and a review date, shared with the team and with investors. When the bet is visible in writing, the founder's conviction becomes something the team can test and rely on, rather than a mood the team has to read each morning.

Feeding and sharing matter most at this stage. Sai Baba cooked and served food himself. A founder asking a small team to wait through lean months for a long bet to mature has to look after them while they wait: pay protected where possible, recognition given openly, attention paid. Patience is far easier when the people sharing it are fed.

If you are raising money this year, the review date is also a gift to your investors. It tells them when they will know, and on what evidence. That is a more honest promise than optimism.

Boards, patient capital and the calendar

In a large company the matrix becomes a governance tool. The board's job is to keep the calendar: to agree in advance when each strategic bet will be judged, and to give management cover when results lag before that date.

Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman argued in Harvard Business Review in 2014 that large asset owners should define long-term objectives, engage actively with portfolio companies, demand long-term performance metrics and build governance that supports long-term investing. The Faith–Patience Matrix gives boards a way to meet such owners halfway, with a register of bets, written reasons and review dates that an investor can read and hold management to.

The operating model below also ties a share of senior pay to measures of three years or more and caps the number of bets the company holds at once. Both are board decisions. Without them, the incentives of a quarterly calendar will defeat any amount of rhetoric about the long term.

Boards should apply Sai Baba's idea of one Master for all here too. A long-term purpose that only the leadership team understands will not hold through a slow phase. It has to be framed so that every group of employees, in every location and of every background, can see their part in it.

Finally, a board should audit its own reversals. Every major change of direction in the year can be classified as driven by evidence or by pressure. If most of them follow weak quarters without new evidence, the company has been spending neither coin.

The business model

Inside a company, the matrix runs on a short list of long-term bets, each with written reasons and a review date agreed in advance, and on care for the teams who work on them through lean periods. Those inputs feed a set of practices: holding bets to their agreed dates, making continue or stop decisions on named evidence, sharing resources with long-horizon teams and keeping priorities few. The outputs are fewer abandoned initiatives, decisions that survive short-term noise and teams that stay through slow phases. The outcomes, set out in the operating model below, are durable long-term value, organisational resilience and credibility with patient capital.

The benefit model

The leader gains the ability to make long bets without swinging between rash moves and paralysis. Employees are spared constant changes of direction and are looked after while long projects mature. Customers can rely on products and commitments that are not dropped at the first difficult quarter. Long-term investors get a management team that sets horizons in advance and keeps to them. Communities gain when firms stay the course on long projects and keep jobs and investment in place through slow periods.

How to implement the WCRC Faith–Patience Matrix

If you are the founder or CEO

1. 1
   Write the bet and reasons

   In the first week, put each long-term bet in writing with the reasons you hold it, before the first setback arrives. A founder may have one bet; a large-company CEO should keep the list short.

2. 2
   Fix the review dates

   Set the date each bet will be reviewed and refuse to pull it forward because a quarter disappoints. Bring a review forward only when new evidence, not pressure, demands it.

3. 3
   Look after those waiting

   During lean periods, personally protect pay, recognition and support for teams on long-horizon work. Check on them every month.

4. 4
   Keep priorities few

   Each quarter, cut any strategic bet that cannot be held with conviction and patience together. Say no to new bets until one is closed.

5. 5
   Test conviction against evidence

   At every scheduled review, ask openly what evidence would show the bet is wrong and listen to the answer. Conviction is never a demand for loyalty to you.

Rolling it out across the company

The execution roadmap

Four phases, each closed by a gate. Do not move on until the gate is met.

Implementation risks and how to handle them

By stage of company

Habits to start this quarter

1. 1
   Name your coin each morning

   Before opening your inbox, ask which of the two you are short of today: conviction or patience. Write one word in your notebook. Over a month the pattern will tell you which corner of the matrix you drift towards under stress.

2. 2
   Answer pressure with a date

   When someone presses you for a fast answer on a long matter, give them the date on which you will decide and what you will look at, instead of a decision. Keep that date. People accept waiting far more readily when they know how long it is.

3. 3
   Share a meal with the slow team

   Once this quarter, sit down to eat with the team working on your longest-horizon project, without slides. Ask what they need to keep going. Sai Baba fed those around him; leaders who want patience from others have to look after them.

4. 4
   Give away one priority

   Pick one thing on your personal list that you are holding out of habit and hand it to someone else or drop it. Fewer priorities make both conviction and patience easier to keep.

5. 5
   Keep a patience log

   Each time you feel the urge to step into a long piece of work early, to chase, redirect or demand an update, write the urge down and hold off for a day. Note what happened when you held. After a quarter you will know how often your impatience was information and how often it was noise.

What to measure

Where the model goes wrong

• Patience becomes procrastination, an excuse to avoid deciding at all.
• Conviction hardens into refusal to look at evidence that the bet is wrong.
• The call for faith is turned into a demand for blind loyalty to the leader, which the teaching never asked.

What the coins buy

Sai Baba arrived in Shirdi with nothing that a modern board would recognise as a credential. He stayed, kept his fire burning, fed people and asked for faith and patience together. What grew around that conduct, over decades, is the Samadhi Mandir and the devotion that still surrounds it. WCRC reads that as a lesson in compounding: small acts held steadily, under a clear conviction, for longer than anyone else is willing to wait.

Leaders are offered formulas every week, and the AI era has multiplied them. Sai Baba's answer to Radhabai still applies. Pay with both coins, or the bet will not be worth what it cost you.

Sources

• History, Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust, Shirdi (https://www.sai.org.in/en/history)
• The Temple Premises, Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust, Shirdi (https://www.sai.org.in/the-temple-premises)
• Shri Sai Satcharita (e-library), Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust, Shirdi (https://www.sai.org.in/en/sai-satcharita)
• The state of AI in 2026: On the road to ROI, McKinsey & Company / QuantumBlack (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai)
• Where companies with a long-term view outperform their peers (Measuring the economic impact of short-termism), McKinsey Global Institute (https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/long-term-capitalism/where-companies-with-a-long-term-view-outperform-their-peers)
• Focusing capital on the long term (Barton & Wiseman, 2014), Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2014/01/focusing-capital-on-the-long-term)