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By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

Governance Is Modernization

By now, if you’ve followed this series, you’ve done something rare. You didn’t walk in and start “fixing” blindly. You understood the equilibrium. You reduced the fear of loss. You made the new way easier than the old way. You created rhythm. You built reputation and credibility. You learned to negotiate, build coalitions, digitize in small steps. And the previous article, Rahul spoke about the hidden requirement: psychological safety because without truth, every dashboard becomes theatre....

Governance Is Modernization

By now, if you’ve followed this series, you’ve done something rare. You didn’t walk in and start “fixing” blindly. You understood the equilibrium. You reduced the fear of loss. You made the new way easier than the old way. You created rhythm. You built reputation and credibility. You learned to negotiate, build coalitions, digitize in small steps. And the previous article, Rahul spoke about the hidden requirement: psychological safety because without truth, every dashboard becomes theatre. Now we close the season with the most grounded definition of “professionalization” I know. It’s not ERP. It’s not fancy roles. It’s not a new org chart. Because when power is unclear, everything else becomes unstable. Which seat are you stepping into? • Inherited seat: you may have formal authority, but decision rights are often still “family-managed”. • Hired seat: you may have responsibility without authority. That is the fastest path to frustration. • Promoted seat: you may have influence, but your boundaries are fuzzy, and that creates daily conflict. Different seats. Same reality: the business runs on invisible boundaries. The property boundary line Think about a property boundary line between two neighbors. When the line is clear, people may still argue but disputes are limited. When the line is unclear, every small thing becomes a fight: • “This is my parking space”. • “That tree is mine”. • “This wall belongs to who?” In a company, decision rights are the boundary line. If the boundary is not clear: • approvals become political • escalation becomes emotional • responsibility becomes a trap • people start bypassing • and “urgent” becomes the excuse for everything This is why modernization fails even after you digitize. Because digitization creates visibility, and visibility creates conflict if authority is still fuzzy. Governance sounds heavy, but it’s actually simple When people hear “governance”, they imagine board meetings and legal language. In MSMEs, governance is much simpler: Who can decide what, within which limits, and what happens when there is a conflict. That’s it. If you can answer those three questions, you’re already professionalizing. Why governance matters more in family-influenced firms In many Indian MSMEs, decisions are not purely operational. They are emotional and relational. A pricing exception may be linked to a relationship. A hiring decision may be linked to loyalty. A capex purchase may be linked to ego and legacy. This is not “wrong”. It’s just real. But when the company starts growing, this style doesn’t scale. It creates confusion: • managers don’t know what they can commit to • teams don’t know whose instruction to follow • the owner gets dragged into everything • and the new leader becomes the “bad cop” without any real authority There’s a light-touch academic way to describe this too: Jensen and Meckling wrote about “agency” issues … when decision-makers and owners have different incentives. The fix is not more control. The fix is clearer decision rights. The three decision rights that change everything If you do only three things in governance, do these: 1. Pricing authority Who can approve discounts? Under what limits? What is the exception path? 2. Capex thresholds Who can approve spending? Up to what amount? What needs owner approval? What can be delegated? 3. Hiring approvals Who can hire? Who can approve headcount? What roles require founder/family sign-off? These three create a surprising amount of stability. Why? Because they cover money, investment, and people … the three biggest emotional zones in MSMEs. What happens when these rights are not clear? You’ll recognize these symptoms: • people take decisions and later say “I thought it was okay” • approvals happen through WhatsApp messages that nobody can trace • the owner says “Why did you do this?” after the fact • managers get blamed for decisions they didn’t have the authority to make • teams bypass the system because “it’s urgent” • and your new “process” becomes optional again It’s not because people are undisciplined. It’s because the boundary line is not drawn. Field Test: Negotiate and document three decision rights This week’s field test is not a workshop. It’s a negotiation. If you try to enforce governance without safety, people will hide. If you try to digitize without governance, conflict will explode. This 12-articles season wasn’t about “fixing operations”. It was about how an incoming leader enters a legacy MSME without triggering immune response and then builds rhythm, credibility, coalition, safe digitization, and finally governance. Now that you can enter the system and steady it, the next macro-arc becomes obvious: How do you build the middle layer that sustains it … so the company doesn’t fall back into founder-dependence? That’s where real scale begins. (The writer is a co-founder at PPS Consulting. He is a business transformation consultant. He could be reached at rahul@ppsconsulting.biz.)

Clever seat selection helped BJP to secure historic win

The party won 65 seats against Congress, 37 against NCP (SP) and 29 against Shiv Sena (UBT)

Clever seat selection

Mumbai: The BJP’s strategic seat sharing with the allies has proved beneficial for the party. An analysis of the Assembly election results show that the BJP has scored over its main rival, the Congress, in a big way because of the direct fights.


The analysis shows that BJP defeated all three constituents of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) – in the direct fights. This is attributed as one of the reasons for the BJP’s historic poll success.


The BJP contested 147 out of 288 seats. In 76 constituencies, it faced Congress. BJP secured victory in 65 seats and lost only 11 seats, making it a whopping 86 per cent of the total direct fights. This was followed by an even stronger performance against NCP (SP). Of the total 39 fights with Sharad Pawar’s party, BJP captured 37 seats making it 95 per cent of the total fights with NCP (SP). BJP and Shiv Sena (UBT) were head-to-head in 32 constituencies, of which BJP emerged victorious in 29 seats, making this 91 per cent of the total direct contests.


According to a BJP strategist the party had bargained hard with its allies, Shiv Sena and NCP to get the desired constituencies in the seat sharing formula. “We had studied to potential candidates of the MVA. That helped us in choosing the seats where we can register comfortable victories,” the strategist said.


BJP spokesperson Niranjan Shetty attributed the success to all the party workers who worked hard to boost development, infrastructure in the state. He gave credit to Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for his contribution to the party’s success.


Shetty pointed out that in 2019, Uddhav Thackeray had stalled all the “novel” and “legendary” projects that Fadnavis had started when he had taken over as CM, making it very easy for the people of Maharashtra to strike a comparison between both the leaders and the potential they had for serving the people. “Devendra Fadnavis gave up his post very easily for the larger good. There are many such examples like Venkaiah Naidu who was BJP National President and later worked as the Vice President of India because that was the need of the hour. We seldom care about our posts,” Shetty told The Perfect Voice.


Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe refused to call the election results as the people’s mandate. “This is not at all a Janata mandate. Despite Maharashtra struggling with so many basic social issues, how can BJP acquire such a huge mandate is the question. If a student copies and fails with just passing marks, it can go unnoticed, but if a student copies and bags the number one position, something is fishy. Why is the BJP scared of ballot papers?” he said.

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