top of page

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)

Lingering Doubts

The death of Ajit Pawar in a plane crash near Baramati last month has left Maharashtra politically shaken and institutionally exposed. Tragedies involving powerful figures rarely remain private affairs. In India, where politics runs on suspicion as much as on trust, they demand not just investigation but finality. That is precisely what has so far been missing in this case.


The Mahayuti government’s decision to request a CBI inquiry, announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, is therefore both unavoidable and overdue. Multiple probes by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the state CID and now the Central Bureau of Investigation may appear excessive. Yet the proliferation of inquiries is itself an indictment of how poorly confidence has been managed since the crash of the chartered Learjet 45 on January 28.


The official account is a technical failure during landing, an unfortunate but explainable accident. But the political afterlife of the crash has been anything but. Rohit Pawar, Ajit Pawar’s nephew and a leader of the rival Sharad Pawar faction, has publicly questioned the circumstances of the crash, alleged irregularities in the handling of evidence, and hinted at possible conflicts of interest involving the aircraft’s owner, VSR. While these claims are unproven, their persistence has ensured that the tragedy has not been allowed to rest.


At the centre of the unease lies the black box. Reports suggesting that the flight recorder was ‘burnt’ have fuelled disbelief. Aviation accidents across the world have involved fires of far greater intensity, yet data recorders usually survive. The suggestion that one did not, or that its condition was misrepresented, has proved politically incendiary.


A CBI probe in this suggests that state-level reassurance has failed. In a polity where investigative agencies are often accused of political bias, the very institution critics distrust is now being invoked as the only authority capable of restoring credibility.


Rohit Pawar’s letter to Narendra Modi, demanding the resignation of the civil aviation minister pending the inquiry risks transforming a safety investigation into a partisan battlefield. Still, such demands draw strength from uncertainty.


Fadnavis has struck a careful tone. He has urged restraint, insisted that the DGCA’s audit of VSR’s logbooks is thorough, and even that he himself has flown on the same aircraft. Yet reassurance cannot substitute for evidence.


This case matters beyond Maharashtra’s factional feuds. Political leaders in India fly frequently, often on chartered aircraft operated by private firms of uneven pedigree. If safety protocols, maintenance records, or investigative processes are found wanting, the implications will be national. A probe that merely closes files will not suffice.


The CBI investigation must therefore do more than identify mechanical causes. It must conclusively dispel doubts about evidence handling, ownership links, regulatory oversight, and delays. Anything less will leave the crash suspended in ambiguity which in turn is fertile ground for conspiracy and cynicism alike. In a democracy already short on trust, closure is not a luxury but a necessity. 


Comments

bottom of page