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)

When Culture Costs Growth

Global business today is not limited by geography, capital, or capability. It is limited by interpretation. A founder recently shared an experience that quietly captures a much larger issue. While working with a business leader from the Netherlands, he realised how quickly intent can be misunderstood. Dutch professionals are known for their directness. Indian professionals, by contrast, value respect, nuance, and indirect communication. Neither approach is wrong. Yet when these worlds collide without context, friction follows. Conversations become strained, decisions slow down, and credibility begins to blur — not because of competence, but because of perception.


What makes this problem particularly dangerous is that it rarely announces itself. No one says, “I don’t trust you anymore.” Instead, calls become shorter. Emails turn formal. Opportunities stall without explanation. Founders often attribute this to market conditions or timing, unaware that the real issue lies elsewhere — in how they are being read, interpreted, and experienced.


This is not an international problem alone. Within India itself, business cultures shift dramatically from region to region. What signals confidence in one room may come across as arrogance in another. What feels respectful in one setting may appear indecisive in another. For founders operating across cities, states, and cultures, these subtleties compound. Over time, the gap between intent and impact widens.


Here is the uncomfortable truth most leaders are never told: growth today is as dependent on perception as it is on performance. And perception, left unmanaged, becomes a liability.


This is where personal branding moves out of the realm of visibility and into the realm of strategic necessity. Personal branding is not about posting more, speaking louder, or becoming a public personality. At its core, it is about consciously shaping how your values, decisions, and leadership style are understood — especially by people who do not share your cultural reference points.


Founders often assume their work speaks for itself. In earlier decades, it did. Today, work speaks, but interpretation decides. Without a clearly articulated personal brand, others are left to fill in the gaps themselves. And they do so using their own cultural lens, biases, and assumptions. This is how capable leaders are misunderstood, how strong businesses face invisible resistance, and how trust erodes without a single visible conflict.


A well-defined personal brand acts as a stabiliser in these moments. It provides context before confusion sets in. It allows people to understand not just what you do, but how you think, what you value, and how you make decisions. When this clarity exists, directness is not mistaken for rudeness, and politeness is not confused with lack of conviction. Conversations become cleaner. Alignment happens faster. Credibility holds firm even across borders.


The most significant shift occurs internally. Leaders with a clear personal brand stop second-guessing how they should show up. They communicate with confidence without overcompensating. They hold authority without appearing distant. Most importantly, they attract relationships that are aligned rather than transactional. This is not accidental; it is the result of intentional positioning.


The cost of ignoring this is subtle but cumulative. Deals that could have moved faster do not. Partnerships that seemed promising lose momentum. Teams hesitate instead of committing fully. None of this shows up on balance sheets immediately, which is why it is often dismissed. But over time, it defines the ceiling of growth.


Founders are particularly vulnerable here because they are too close to themselves. They know their intent, their ethics, their effort. Others only know what is visible. Personal branding bridges this gap — not by exaggerating, but by translating.


If you are a business leader navigating diverse teams, international clients, or culturally varied markets, and you sense that growth is slowing for reasons you cannot fully explain, this is worth examining. Not as a marketing exercise, but as a leadership one.


Sometimes, the most important work is not expanding into new markets, but ensuring you are being clearly understood in the ones you already occupy.


If this perspective resonates, I invite you to connect with me for a conversation. Not to sell, but to explore whether perception — not performance — might be the quiet variable influencing your next phase of growth. Clarity often begins with a single, honest conversation.


You can book a consultation here: https://sprect.com/pro/divyaaadvaani


(The author is a personal branding expert. She has clients from 14+ countries. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page