1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?

A number of issues such as cash flow, succession planning, staff turnover and eroding margins often come down to the business owner like us spending too much time IN the business rather than working ON it.

2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I worked with small and big enterprises from my college time. As an Officer on special Duty I served as an institutional change agent and champion for diversity and inclusion by providing broad, integrative leadership in collaboration with campus-wide constituencies. Been recommended to lead conversations, review and recommend policies and processes, and support the campus to include diversity at the highest level of institutional importance’s managed large marketing teams of universities.
My previous organization's faith in me pushed me to start my own venture. I would like to advise my fellow SMEs that be smart, alive, active on social media platforms, utilize it in the right direction.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

Eliminate Decision-Making Tasks In The Morning, this means the best way to have a productive morning is to get a head start on it the night before. I assign the work ticket to the head of the teams before they join the desk in the morning.
Planning the evening before is effective because we have a limited amount of willpower and decision-making ability every day.
I follow and check the work ticket at noon and evening. Sometimes I randomly check the work of individual employees.

4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?

Talk less, listen more.
People will pay attention to what you say, just because of your position. The leader’s job is to pay attention to what other people say, especially those who think their views don’t count.
Show you’re listening by acting on what people tell you, and gain their trust by giving them the credit.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

THE BREAKTHROUGH BOOK - By Author Megha Bajaj set out on journey and visited different parts of the country and discovered eleven such individuals who were truly happy and successful in a country of 1.3 billion people

6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?

Get clarity on what is the best use of your time.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?

Unlike an operation to catch rabbits, trapping an elephant calls for expertise over enthusiasm. Those who hunt rabbits are rarely able to rope in elephants.’ In The Elephant Catchers, Subroto Bagchi distils his years of on-the-ground learning to explore what organizations and their people must do to climb to the next level and beyond. Through a combination of engaging anecdotes from his experiences as co-founder, and subsequently Chairman, of Mindtree Ltd, as well as practical advice on growth-related issues such as dealing with consultants or navigating strategy traps and M&As, Bagchi demonstrates a crucial point: Organizations with real ambition to get to the top need to embrace the idea of scale.