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)

The Many Poles of Modi’s World

India’s strategic tango with Russia and its hard-nosed bargaining with America signal a foreign policy no longer bound to any single camp.

The world is moving into a new era-one defined unmistakably by the politics of multipolarity. Gone are the days when the global order revolved solely around a single axis the United States. The unipolar system dominated by America is gradually fading. Today, India is forging strategic partnerships with Russia on both military and economic fronts, while also negotiating trade agreements with the United States. This evolving dynamic signals India's emergence as an independent and assertive player in global diplomacy.


A U.S. delegation will soon arrive in Delhi to push a near-final trade deal, but India has dug in: tariffs must be capped at 15 percent not the 17 percent Washington wants. India will not bargain away its interests.


Under American pressure to curb Russian oil, India has trimmed imports by 10 percent, yet insists prices remain competitive; conveniently, U.S. oil and gas now arrive at similar rates. It is pragmatic hedging in a crowded geopolitical field.


Deal or no deal, India will not let Washington decide its partners. Modi’s foreign policy has recast India as an autonomous power - an evolution Putin captured crisply when he said, “this is not the India of 1947.”


Pragmatic Hedging

India’s recent gift of a Russian translation of the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ added a spiritual gloss to its diplomacy with Moscow. The text’s core lesson - that peace is preferable but force sometimes unavoidable - mirrors India’s own posture which is conciliatory in intent, prepared in practice.


New Delhi has signalled that Russia must act as it sees fit, even as channels for negotiation stay open. Neither Donald Trump’s interventions nor outside pressure can end the conflict; that hinges on whether Volodymyr Zelenskyy chooses to pursue talks in earnest.


Zelenskyy may visit India next month, though dates remain unconfirmed. Officials from both sides have been in quiet discussions for weeks, continuing the balancing act India maintained in 2024, when Narendra Modi visited Moscow and Kyiv in quick succession. India’s aim remains unchanged: to keep relations steady on both fronts while nudging the war, however cautiously, toward a political settlement.


All this underscores how dramatically different is the global order. Economically, the U.S. faces mounting debt and a weakening power base. While America clings to its unipolar aspirations, the world has inevitably moved on. China advocates a bipolar world dominated by itself and America as joint superpowers. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi envisions a truly multipolar world-with India, Russia, China, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia each acting as independent poles of power. NATO and the Global South will also form constituent poles in this expanded landscape. This strategic framework aims at connecting all poles to maintain balance and foster cooperation.


India’s leadership on this front was evident when it expanded the Group of Twenty (G20) to G21, opening doors for increased participation of African nations on the global stage.


Russia has invited India to join an exclusive trade route through the Arctic Circle-about 8,000 km away from India. Only five or six countries are members of this vital corridor, and notably, China was excluded. Additionally, Russia entrusted India with the critical task of ship-breaking on this route, despite China dominating 65 percent of global shipbuilding. These moves have unsettled both China and the U.S., underscoring Moscow’s lack of trust toward Beijing.


Another pillar of India-Russia cooperation is the ‘Reciprocal Exchange of Logistics Support’ (RELOS) agreement, allowing the two countries armed forces to utilize each other's military facilities. As per this agreement, India gains access to over 40 Russian naval and air bases, including strategic sites in the Arctic and Pacific regions. Furthermore, Russia will deploy five warships, ten military aircraft, and over thirty thousand troops in India for five years. India will similarly station forces in Russia. This mutual logistic support significantly enhances India's operational reach and limits China's influence in the Indian Ocean. This arrangement is a growing source of concern for both Beijing and Washington. Any nation considering hostile action against India would now have to reconsider the formidable strategic challenge it would face.


China, for its part, is irked not merely because India buys Russian arms, but because it is securing the technology behind them. The swift co-development of the BrahMos missile realised in a mere six months was a rude awakening for Beijing. It signalled that further Russian transfers could allow India to scale up production of advanced systems, including fighter jets, within a few short years.


As the global order drifts toward multipolarity, India is finally beginning to occupy the place it has long claimed, carving out a role that is assured and sovereign.  

Comments

bottom of page