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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)

Turning Right, Looking Outward

With Sanae Takaichi’s landslide, Tokyo signals a harder line at home, a sharper edge abroad, and a readiness to reshape the Indo-Pacific balance.

Japan does not often deliver political earthquakes. Its post-war democracy has been defined more by continuity than rupture, by factional bargaining within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) than by sweeping mandates. Now, Sanae Takaichi’s emphatic election victory - an outright majority for the LDP and a two-thirds supermajority with its coalition partner Ishin - comes close to an earthquake. It is not merely a personal triumph for a first-term prime minister. It is a signal that Japan’s strategic centre of gravity is shifting decisively, with consequences that will be felt far beyond Tokyo.


The numbers alone are startling. The LDP crossed the 233-seat threshold for a Lower House majority within hours of polls closing, and Ishin now controls enough seats to override the upper chamber. For a leader who only assumed office in October last year and promptly called a rare winter election, the result confers unusual authority. Japan’s recent history of four prime ministers in roughly three years makes the contrast sharper. Takaichi has not just survived the volatility; she has decisively crushed it.


At home, the mandate frees her to pursue an agenda that blends economic populism with strategic hawkishness. Her pledge to cut the consumption tax has unsettled markets already wary of Japan’s towering public debt. But politically, the move taps into a broader frustration among younger voters, a cohort that has responded to her blunt style, her image as an indefatigable worker, and even the curious pop-cultural phenomenon of ‘sanakatsu’ - the social-media fandom built around her everyday accessories. This reflects a deeper realignment where a conservative leader is managing to mobilise younger voters in a society often caricatured as gerontocratic and risk-averse.


Yet it is on defence and foreign policy that Takaichi’s victory carries the most weight. In office, she has wasted little time accelerating military spending and sharpening Japan’s posture towards China. This builds on trends set in motion under her predecessors, but her tone is more forthright and her ideological instincts more unapologetic. The era in which Japan could rely on strategic ambiguity by being economically entwined with China while sheltering comfortably under America’s security umbrella, is drawing to a close. Takaichi’s Japan is openly preparing for a more contested Indo-Pacific.


Beijing will have noted the scale of her mandate with unease. A Japan with a stable government, rising defence budgets, and parliamentary room to manoeuvre is a more formidable actor in East Asia.


Tokyo’s role in the ‘Quad’ with India, Australia and the United States is likely to deepen, as will cooperation on maritime security and supply-chain resilience. For China, already grappling with a tightening ring of US allies, Takaichi’s victory adds another layer of strategic friction.


Washington, by contrast, sees reassurance. The unusual endorsement she received from President Donald Trump during the campaign underscored how central Japan has become to American strategy in Asia. A stronger, more assertive Tokyo reduces the burden on the US while reinforcing deterrence against China and North Korea.


Beyond the region, the implications are subtler but no less significant. Japan has long been a status quo power, a champion of rules-based trade and multilateralism. Takaichi’s blend of tax cuts, defence expansion and muscular nationalism suggests a recalibration rather than an abandonment of that role. Tokyo is unlikely to retreat from global institutions, but it will press harder for reforms that reflect shifting power balances.


The supermajority also raises the question of constitutional change that Japan has skirted for decades. With the numbers now on her side, Takaichi may be tempted to revisit Article 9, the pacifist clause that has constrained Japan’s military role since 1947. Even incremental revisions would mark a historic break, normalising Japan as a conventional military power at a time when global norms are already under strain.


For now, the message from voters is unmistakable. Japan wants decisiveness after drift. Long seen as cautious to a fault, the country has chosen a leader prepared to test the limits of its post-war inheritance.

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