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By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is...

The Boundary Collapse

When kindness becomes micromanagement It started with a simple leave request.   “Hey, can I take Friday off? Need a personal day,” Meera messaged Rohit. Rohit replied instantly:   “Of course. All good. Just stay reachable if anything urgent comes up.”   He meant it as reassurance. But the team didn’t hear reassurance. They heard a rule.   By noon, two things had shifted inside The Workshop:   Meera felt guilty for even asking. Everyone else quietly updated their mental handbook: Leave is allowed… but not really. This is boundary collapse… when a leader’s good intentions unintentionally blur the limits that protect autonomy and rest. When care quietly turns into control Founders rarely intend to micromanage.   What looks like control from the outside often starts as care from the inside. “Let me help before something breaks.” “Let me stay involved so we don’t lose time.” “Loop me in… I don’t want you stressed.” Supportive tone.   Good intentions.   But one invisible truth defines workplace psychology: When power says “optional,” it never feels optional.
So when a client requested a revision, Rohit gently pinged:   “If you’re free, could you take a look?” Of course she logged in.   Of course she handled it.   And by Monday, the cultural shift was complete: Leave = location change, not a boundary.   A founder’s instinct had quietly become a system. Pattern 1: The Generous Micromanager Modern micromanagement rarely looks aggressive. It looks thoughtful :   “Let me refine this so you’re not stuck.” “I’ll review it quickly.”   “Share drafts so we stay aligned.”   Leaders believe they’re being helpful. Teams hear:   “You don’t fully trust me.” “I should check with you before finishing anything.”   “My decisions aren’t final.” Gentle micromanagement shrinks ownership faster than harsh micromanagement ever did because people can’t challenge kindness. Pattern 2: Cultural conditioning around availability In many Indian workplaces, “time off” has an unspoken footnote: Be reachable. Just in case. No one says it directly.   No one pushes back openly.   The expectation survives through habit: Leave… but monitor messages. Rest… but don’t disconnect. Recover… but stay alert. Contrast this with a global team we worked with: A designer wrote,   “I’ll be off Friday, but available if needed.” Her manager replied:   “If you’re working on your off-day, we mismanaged the workload… not the boundary.”   One conversation.   Two cultural philosophies.   Two completely different emotional outcomes.   Pattern 3: The override reflex Every founder has a version of this reflex.   Whenever Rohit sensed risk, real or imagined, he stepped in: Rewriting copy.   Adjusting a design.   Rescoping a task.   Reframing an email. Always fast.   Always polite.   Always “just helping.” But each override delivered one message:   “Your autonomy is conditional.” You own decisions…   until the founder feels uneasy.   You take initiative…   until instinct replaces delegation.   No confrontation.   No drama.   Just quiet erosion of confidence.   The family-business amplification Boundary collapse becomes extreme in family-managed companies.   We worked with one firm where four family members… founder, spouse, father, cousin… all had informal authority. Everyone cared.   Everyone meant well.   But for employees, decision-making became a maze: Strategy approved by the founder.   Aesthetics by the spouse.   Finance by the father. Tone by the cousin.   They didn’t need leadership.   They needed clarity.   Good intentions without boundaries create internal anarchy. The global contrast A European product team offered a striking counterexample.   There, the founder rarely intervened mid-stream… not because of distance, but because of design:   “If you own the decision, you own the consequences.” Decision rights were clear.   Escalation paths were explicit.   Authority didn’t shift with mood or urgency. No late-night edits.   No surprise rewrites.   No “quick checks.”   No emotional overrides. As one designer put it:   “If my boss wants to intervene, he has to call a decision review. That friction protects my autonomy.” The result:   Faster execution, higher ownership and zero emotional whiplash. Boundaries weren’t personal.   They were structural .   That difference changes everything. Why boundary collapse is so costly Its damage is not dramatic.   It’s cumulative.   People stop resting → you get presence, not energy.   People stop taking initiative → decisions freeze.   People stop trusting empowerment → autonomy becomes theatre.   People start anticipating the boss → performance becomes emotional labour.   People burn out silently → not from work, but from vigilance.   Boundary collapse doesn’t create chaos.   It creates hyper-alertness, the heaviest tax on any team. The real paradox Leaders think they’re being supportive. Teams experience supervision.   Leaders assume boundaries are obvious. Teams see boundaries as fluid. Leaders think autonomy is granted. Teams act as though autonomy can be revoked at any moment. This is the Boundary Collapse → a misunderstanding born not from intent, but from the invisible weight of power. Micromanagement today rarely looks like anger.   More often,   it looks like kindness without limits. (Rahul Kulkarni is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He patterns the human mechanics of scaling where workplace behavior quietly shapes business outcomes. Views personal.)

The Measured March of India’s Economy

Updated: Feb 3

Part 4:

Amid global uncertainty, India’s economy ahead of Budget 2025 keeps moving forward, albeit with a few stumbles along the way.

India’s Economy

A country’s economic pulse is rarely a steady beat. It quickens, falters, and adapts to internal and external shocks. India, a nation of a billion aspirations, has seen its economy navigate a tightrope between resilience and volatility. While much attention has been paid to agriculture, consumer demand, employment levels and inflation, the story remains incomplete without an examination of manufacturing and the services sector.


Ahead of Budget 2025, India’s economic trajectory is poised at a critical juncture. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP), a vital gauge of economic activity, measures industrial output trends against a base year. From April to October 2024, the IIP grew by four percent year-on-year, a noticeable deceleration from the seven percent expansion in the previous year. The industrial sector posted an 8.3 percent growth in the first quarter, only to slide to four percent in the second, dragging the overall growth rate to six percent for the first half of fiscal year 2025. The global economic landscape, rife with geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions, has weighed heavily on India’s industrial production, especially in the latter months.


A closer look at the data shows a mixed impact across industries. Oil companies face inventory losses and shrinking margins, while steel manufacturers struggle with falling prices. Heavy rains in Q2 dampened construction, lowering demand for raw materials. However, with the monsoon’s end, the government's capital expenditure push and rising urban demand could revitalize sectors like cement, iron, and steel. The manufacturing PMI for April-November 2025 stood at 57.5, indicating expansion, and the RBI's Industrial Outlook Survey shows improved demand conditions, with expectations of continued growth in the final quarter.


Meanwhile, the services sector, India’s economic workhorse, expanded by 7.1 percent in the first half of fiscal year 2025, up from six percent in the same period the previous year. The services PMI, though slightly lower year-on-year at 59.7, remains in expansionary territory. Hospitality has held steady, with hotel occupancy rates mirroring last year’s levels, while daily rates and revenue per room have climbed, buoyed by increased corporate and leisure travel. Digital payments, too, have surged, with transactions now accounting for nine percent of GDP as of December 2024, up from below eight percent in March. Average daily Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions reached 5.4 billion, a sharp rise from 3.9 billion in December 2023.


Foreign investment patterns reflect a mixed sentiment. Gross inward foreign direct investment (FDI) between April and November 2024 totalled $55.6 billion, a healthy increase from $47.2 billion a year earlier. Mauritius, Singapore, the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates collectively accounted for over 75 percent of these inflows. Foreign portfolio investments (FPI), however, have been more volatile. While net FPI inflows reached $20.1 billion in the first half of the fiscal year, the third quarter saw an outflow of $11.6 billion, and by mid-January 2025, another $3.4 billion had exited Indian markets. The capital markets, rattled by global uncertainty, high domestic valuations, and rising U.S. Treasury yields, have responded with characteristic jitters.


Despite these fluctuations, India’s foreign exchange reserves remain formidable. As of January 3, 2025, reserves stood at $634.6 billion, equivalent to 11 months of imports and nearly 90 percent of the nation’s total external debt as of September 2024. India now ranks as the world’s fourth-largest holder of foreign exchange reserves, behind only China, Japan, and Switzerland. However, the Reserve Bank of India’s active intervention in forex markets to defend the rupee led to a depletion of $20 billion in reserves. Since these interventions ceased, the rupee has depreciated, offering a silver lining for exporters but complicating import costs.


The second half of fiscal year 2025 holds promise but also uncertainties. While factors like a good monsoon, a recovering agricultural sector, strong demand, and rising government spending are expected to sustain growth, external challenges like geopolitical tensions, an unstable rupee, fluctuating commodity prices and changing U.S. policy could disrupt momentum. Crucially, a slowdown in growth doesn’t signify economic contraction. Despite alarmist headlines, the data reveals resilience, not crisis.


In closing, it is worth recalling the immortal words of Robert Frost: “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” For the Indian economy, those miles stretch ahead, filled with both challenges and opportunities.


(The author is a Chartered Accountant and works at Automotive Division of Mahindra and Mahindra Limited. Views personal.)

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