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By:

Rashmi Kulkarni

23 March 2025 at 2:58:52 pm

Making a New Normal Feel Obvious

Normal is not what’s written. Normal is what repeats. The temple bell rings at the same time every day. Not everyone prays. Not everyone even walks in. Some people don’t care at all. And yet when that bell rings, the whole neighborhood syncs. Shops open, chores move, calls pause. The bell doesn’t convince anyone. It simply creates rhythm. That’s how “normal” is built inside a legacy MSME too. Not by speeches. By repetition. Quick recap: Week 1: You inherited an equilibrium. Week 2: People...

Making a New Normal Feel Obvious

Normal is not what’s written. Normal is what repeats. The temple bell rings at the same time every day. Not everyone prays. Not everyone even walks in. Some people don’t care at all. And yet when that bell rings, the whole neighborhood syncs. Shops open, chores move, calls pause. The bell doesn’t convince anyone. It simply creates rhythm. That’s how “normal” is built inside a legacy MSME too. Not by speeches. By repetition. Quick recap: Week 1: You inherited an equilibrium. Week 2: People resist loss, not improvement. Week 3: Status quo wins when your new way is harder. Week 4 is the next problem: even when your idea is good and even when it is easy, it can still fail because people don’t move together. One team starts. Another team waits. One person follows. Another person quietly returns to the old way. So, the old normal comes back … not because your idea was wrong, but because your new normal never became normal. Which Seat? • Inherited : people expect direction, but they only shift when they see what you consistently protect. • Hired : people wait for proof “Is this just a corporate habit you’ll drop in a month?” • Promoted : people watch whether you stay consistent under pressure. Now here’s the useful idea from Thomas Schelling: a “focal point”. Don’t worry about the term. In simple words, it means: you don’t need everyone convinced. You need one clear anchor that everyone can align around. In a legacy MSME, that anchor is rarely a policy document. It’s not a rollout email. It’s a ritual. Why Rituals? These firms run on informal rules, relationships, memory, and quick calls. That flexibility keeps work moving, but it also makes change socially risky. Even supportive people hesitate because they’re thinking: “If I follow this and others don’t, I’ll look foolish.” “If I share real numbers, will I become the target?” “If I push this new flow, will I upset a senior person?” “If I do it properly, will it slow me down?” When people feel that risk, they wait. And waiting is how the status quo survives. A focal ritual breaks the waiting. It sends one clean signal: “This is real. This is how we work now.” Focal Ritual It’s a short, fixed review that repeats with the same format. For example: a weekly scoreboard review (15 minutes) a daily dispatch huddle (10 minutes) a fixed purchase-approval window (cutoff + queue) The meeting isn’t the magic. The repetition is. When it repeats without drama, it becomes believable. When it becomes believable, people start syncing to it, even the ones who were unsure. Common Mistake New leaders enter with energy and pressure: “show impact”. So they try to fix reporting, planning, quality, procurement, digitization … everything. The result is predictable. People don’t know what is truly “must follow”. So everything becomes “optional”. They do a little of each, and nothing holds. If you want change to stick, pick one focal ritual and make it sacred. Not forever. Just long enough for the bell to become the bell. Field Test Step 1 : Pick one pain area that creates daily chaos: delayed dispatch, pending purchase approvals, rework, overdue collections. Step 2 : Set the ritual: Fixed time, fixed duration (15 minutes). One scoreboard (one page, one screen). Same three questions every time: – What moved since last time? – What is stuck and why? – What decision is needed today? One owner who closes the loop (decisions + due dates). Step 3 : Protect it for 8 weeks. Don’t cancel because you’re busy. Don’t skip because a VIP came. Don’t “postpone once” because someone complained. I’ve seen a simple weekly dispatch scoreboard die this exact way. Week one was sharp. By week three, it got pushed “just this once” because someone had a client visit. Week four, it moved again for “urgent work”. After that, nobody took it seriously. The old follow-ups returned, and the leader was back to chasing people daily. The first casual cancellation tells the system: “This was a phase”. And the old normal returns fast. One Warning Don’t turn the ritual into policing. If it becomes humiliation, people will hide information. If it becomes shouting, people will stop speaking. If it becomes a lecture, people will mentally leave. Keep it calm. Keep it consistent. Keep it useful. A bell doesn’t shout. It just rings. (The author is Co-founder at PPS Consulting and a business operations advisor. She helps businesses across sectors and geographies improve execution through global best practices. She could be reached at rashmi@ppsconsulting.biz)

Disastrous Maze of Fake Narratives and Us

Part 2: Power today lies not only in votes but in vigilance — in choosing truth over the comfort of outrage.

In Part 1, we explored how fake narratives are manufactured and weaponised. Now, we must ask: could these misleading stories have roots in long-standing agendas, influencing India for centuries?


For the last 1,500 years, India has been in high demand for gold, diamonds, spices, salt, medicine, clothing, and education. People have visited universities to learn while taking the knowledge back to their own countries.  After the Turks took Constantinople, all of Europe was mad about finding India via a sea route. Finally, the pope got in to guide them. A few of the king’s search teams were asked to go via Africa, and others via the American continent. This was the importance of India. After reaching there, they have exploited India and other Asian countries. They made colonies out of that. However, after WW2, almost all countries gained freedom, but with conditions. But was that real?


These European masters ensured that the societies of these countries were always divided by various issues like religion, caste, and political background. For that, they introduced various systems like modern education, used to identify and teach points like faults between various caste and religion groups, like the Aryan invasion theory, Dravidian and other caste politics, isolating the northeast via conversion, isolating and supporting radicals, and ensuring that countries are divided. Colonial masters can exploit the resources of these countries by leveraging the fault lines between them.


The real sons of the soil were pushed to jails, away from people, and the people who followed masters and accepted their narratives are being established as named social reformers.  They were given all recognition/political places. So that after freedom, these leaders, a few gods created from jokers, got into all the administration and high political positions. We all can see how the newly freed countries behaved in the best interest of the colonial masters for the next several years and decades. (e.g., see how Pakistan was used to destabilise Indian Asia)


This was an ongoing process till 1980. Soon after, people started realising the ongoing fake narratives that are being managed by the global non-state factors known as the deep state. This deep state can be anyone, a big organisation, or a rich radical group, etc., who is interested in exploiting the natural resources or the political power of the country.


Like in COVID, India was pushed to buy a certain vaccine; however, India refused, created its own and sent it to another 50 countries for free.  So these companies, like pharma/defence/biotech giants, can readily invest in the anti-factors via which they can influence our country, like India, to make them create a market, and if the government is against their policy, then they will definitely try to change the government.  This is by ensuring the fake narratives around that government and its people, and this is exactly what the next generation war from the non-state factors is. (e.g., farmer agitation and Mia Khalifa's support for it). Canada is supporting anti-CAA, etc.


But then the main question is what we can do against it!! Is that difficult? Might be yes, but it's not impossible.


India is the largest, solid, democratic country, and we, the people who support that democracy, have the power to choose the right people who work in the interest of the country.  If we begin to understand the patterns of the fake narrative, where people suddenly accuse the election commission, hate Supreme Court decisions, call out the administration on foreign soil and blame the Indian government. Asking foreign powers to intervene, asking for GenZ-War, then we should understand these clear cases of these narratives.


Once we start understanding, then the key is to stay together, creating awareness about fake narratives and going back to our roots and culture. Additionally, we must trust all the solid pillars of democracy and government and take all our grievances and questions only via the democratic process. It is always the answer to the conspirators of anarchy/Gen Z war.


In this era of information, we have multiple types of information, including what is right and that what is wrong. Power is how to use it for the future of us, our country, and the next generation.  History is watching us as decision-makers.


(The writer works in the Information Technology sector. Views personal.)


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