Rahul Kulkarni

If people can’t tell you the truth, your dashboards will lie for them. So now you finally have what most leaders think they need: a system. And yet… the system still doesn’t show the truth. Numbers look “clean”. Reports look “reasonable”. Problems show up late. Bad news arrives only when it becomes a fire. This is where many leaders get fooled. They look at the dashboard and think, “Great, we’re improving.” And then reality punches them. A shipment fails. A customer escalates. A vendor...

Most change fails not from resistance, but from weak coalition design. Even if you negotiate well, you can still fail for a boring reason: You built the wrong coalition. This week we step into the third act of this series: modernize without backlash. Most leaders walk into an MSME thinking change is a vote. If most people agree, you win. That’s corporate thinking. In legacy Indian SMEs, the majority is usually passive. The people who matter are the ones who can stop the flow. Which Seat...

Your authority is limited. Your alternatives decide your leverage One new problem shows up … especially in Indian MSMEs: You realise your authority is not as strong as your designation. And this is where many leaders get emotionally confused. They think, “I’m the leader. Why is this not happening?” Simple answer: because in legacy MSMEs, hierarchy is only one power source. Informal power is often stronger: old relationships, ownership proximity, “I’ve been here 20 years,” vendor networks,...