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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)

Mumbai Stakes

After nearly three years of institutional drift, Maharashtra’s civic democracy has been roused from suspension. The State Election Commission’s announcement of polling dates for long-overdue local body elections set for January 15, with results the following day ends a hiatus that began in 2022. The election to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is less a routine municipal contest than a referendum on Maharashtra’s political future.


No municipal institution elsewhere in Asia commands such resources. The BMC’s projected budget for 2025–26 at Rs. 74,427 crore dwarfs that of any other civic body in India. Control of the BMC is therefore about patronage, policy leverage and the power to shape India’s financial capital. Winning Mumbai confers an advantage that echoes far beyond its ward boundaries.


Sensing this, the ruling BJP-led Mahayuti has chosen unity over grievance. After months of acrimony, the BJP, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and Ajit Pawar’s NCP have agreed to fight the BMC together. Coordination committees have been formed; past allegations of poaching and sabotage have been quietly shelved. For the BJP, this election is unfinished business. In 2017 it fell just short, winning 82 of 227 seats - two fewer than the then-undivided Shiv Sena - despite contesting alone. Since then, the party’s organisational reach in Maharashtra has grown, and alliance arithmetic now looks kinder. The price of unity has been accommodation as Shinde’s Sena has staked claim to 90–100 seats, forcing the BJP to temper its ambitions in exchange for a plausible path to power.


The Opposition’s story is messier. The most intriguing subplot is the thaw between the Thackeray cousins. Uddhav Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (UBT) and Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, once locked in bitter rivalry, now appear united by fear of extinction. For Uddhav, the BMC may be the last credible platform from which to reclaim relevance after the 2022 party split. For Raj, the election is framed as a defence of Marathi identity against both national parties and migrant politics. Sentiment, nostalgia and linguistic pride are being marshalled in tandem.


Yet, this rapprochement threatens to fracture the broader Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA). The Congress has drawn a red line, warning it will go solo if the MNS is formally inducted. The Congress is understandably anxious that Raj Thackeray’s strident politics could alienate minorities, Dalits and north Indian voters who form a crucial part of the Congress base in Mumbai. A solo Congress run, however, risks splintering the anti-BJP vote. Data from the 2024 assembly elections suggest that without MNS support, the opposition may struggle to reach the BMC’s majority mark of 114 seats, inadvertently smoothing the Mahayuti’s path.


Sharad Pawar, the MVA’s veteran balancer, reportedly favours keeping the coalition intact even if that means embracing the MNS. Whether such alchemy is possible remains unclear. What is certain is that after three years of democratic suspension, the BMC election will test alliances and settle past scores.

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