It had been an impressive business plan, well-researched market-wise, sound finances and a competitive pricing strategy. After six months, the same business owner sat before us, frustrated and said, I know what needs to be done, but it is impossible to get my team to do it. Does this situation sound familiar?
As per statistics, the MSME sector contributes nearly 30% to India’s GDP, and about 63 million units are in existence within the Indian economy. But how many out of these businesses succeed? This problem lies not in the inability to create great business ideas but rather in a business execution strategy problem.
Learn why businesses fail in India and get to execute better!
SME owners generally point fingers at their teams. They don’t listen. They’re not proactive. I have to be on top of everything. This is our experience in dozens of consulting projects: The problem doesn’t lie with the team. It lies with the system that surrounds it.
Without a process for handling tasks, a routine for weekly status meetings, and key performance indicators associated with specific results, individuals will tend to focus on addressing the urgent versus the important. Having a business execution strategy without having a supporting system is nothing but a pipe dream.
Perhaps you have a clear vision of how you see your business going in the future. However, do your salespeople share the same vision? Does your operations manager? In almost all SMEs that we have consulted, the answer is negative. While the owner sees the big picture, his or her employees see only parts of the puzzle.
The solution to this problem is quite simple. Set out your goals per quarter and divide them further into monthly objectives per department. You don’t even have to make it complicated. One sheet of paper reviewed weekly could transform the whole dynamic of your employees’ performance and boost the sales performance.
Tasks are being executed in a growing business, but there is no owner of the activity. When the business owner asks who manages follow-ups with prospects, three people start pointing fingers at each other. This is among the most important factors responsible for why companies go belly-up in India once they enter the growth stage.
There should be an owner of each vital activity for example: lead management, dispatch management, payment management to vendors, and customer service management. There must be clarity on the process owner. There must be clear accountability.
When you and your team have spent the entire day firefighting issues, there won’t be much room left to follow your strategic plan. There was a delivery delay. You had an irate client. The accountant messed up on something important. It’s just another typical day.
The sad truth is that many of these crises could actually be easily avoided using simple SOPs and routine meetings each week. For example, a half-hour Monday morning meeting where you align around the team’s top three focus areas for the week will go a long way.
Unless you monitor them, you won’t be able to improve their performance. Most SMEs in India operate without monitoring their team’s performance for long gaps. How many leads were generated last week? How long does it take to close an order? What is the customer retention rate in this quarter?
According to a 2025 study conducted by SIDBI-Crisil, only 16-20% of MSMEs in India use formal credit channels. The main reason is the inability of such businesses to prove their performance as they have never measured it before. Business Execution Strategy begins with measuring five key figures for your income and analysing them every week.
Reactive hiring is common in growing organisations. There is always attrition of employees, hence, the organisation scrambles to find a replacement. New business keeps generating; hence, more resources are hired. But a lack of clear job descriptions, onboarding processes, and performance criteria turns the newly recruited employee into just an office occupant.
Based on our observations, firms that invest time & energy designing and implementing an organised onboarding process are able to cut down the period spent by new employees acclimatising to their jobs at least by a month.
Here’s what actually moves the needle for SMEs:
It appears simple because it is. The hard part isn’t knowing this; it’s doing it every single week without exception. That’s where discipline becomes your competitive advantage.
Indian SMEs do not fail because of poor concepts. Indian SMEs fail because great concepts fall into oblivion midway between the founder’s imagination and the execution team’s mundane tasks. This business execution strategy deficiency can be corrected, but not without structure.
The companies that move beyond the fifty to hundred crore mark are those that learn to operate independently of the founder’s active involvement in every process. They establish a framework of execution regardless of the founder’s physical presence in the organisation. This is the true game changer.
If you are an entrepreneur who finds yourself trapped amid a successful product and a competent execution team, The WhiteLotus is uniquely equipped to assist Indian MSMEs with precisely this type of execution challenge. Sometimes, it only takes an objective outside perspective to reveal the obvious.
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