Nothing is sacred
Previous post on the subject – Stuck in a different age
This is the summary of another of Don Vandergriff’s forthcoming books – Manning the Future Legions of the United States: Finding and Developing Tomorrow’s Centurions. While his book primarily refers to the US army, there are huge parallels with the current day Indian military in the book. He argues that the outdated personnel management system is detrimental to the organisational culture. This, in turn, leads to a poor quality of military leadership, weak institutional framework [non-adaptive] and poor recruiting and retention rates.
An Industrial Age model continues to shape the way the Army approaches its recruiting, personnel management, training, and education. This outdated personnel management paradigm–designed for an earlier era–has been so intimately tied to the maintenance of Army culture that a self-perpetuating cycle has formed, diminishing the Army’s attempts to develop adaptive leaders and institutions.
This cycle can be broken only if the Army accepts rapid evolutionary change as the norm of the new era. Recruiting the right people, then having them step into an antiquated organization, means that many of them will not stay as they find their ability to contribute and develop limited by a centralized, hierarchical organization. Recruiting and retention data bear this out.
Several factors have combined to force the Army to think about the way it develops and nurtures its leaders. Yet, Vandergriff maintains, mere modifications to today’s paradigm may not be enough. Today’s Army has to do more than post rhetoric about “adaptability” on briefing slides and in literature. One cannot divorce the way the Army accesses, promotes, and selects its leaders from its leadership-development model. The Army cannot expect to maintain leaders who grasp and practice adaptability if these officers encounter an organization that is neither adaptive nor innovative. Instead, Army culture must become adaptive, and the personnel system must evolve into one that nurtures adaptability in its policies, practices, and beliefs.
His conclusion warrants more attention, especially when many misunderstand a call for reform of the Indian defence services as a blasphemous and sacrilegious act.
Only a detailed, comprehensive plan where nothing is sacred will pave the way to cultural evolution. [emphasis mine]
The Army cannot expect to maintain leaders who grasp and practice adaptability if these officers encounter an organization that is neither adaptive nor innovative. Instead, Army culture must become adaptive, and the personnel system must evolve into one that nurtures adaptability in its policies, practices, and beliefs.
I agree.
Recruiting the right people, then having them step into an antiquated organization, means that many of them will not stay as they find their ability to contribute and develop limited by a centralized, hierarchical organization.
To recruit the right people you’ve got to make it a job worth being recruited.
What ails the Forces is its HR approach..assuming the SSBs are doing their job and recruiting potentially the right kind of people..the leaders/ recruiters are failing to realize that all officers coming through the training academies are NOT going to be fit to serve for 20 years. Hence, a sensible exit policy is essential not just for the officer but also to recycle the officer cadre manpower. The leadership needs to realize that the you cannot have a pot bellied army and expect it to be efficient. It needs to be ” a lean and mean fighting machine ” and for that their is only one solution…DOWNSIZE!
First Let go of your liabilities..and that means all personnel who don’t want to serve. And then let go of all the people who after review, are found not FIT to serve..that’s important too. By keeping defunct, unproductive manpower on its payrolls the forces are doing a disservice to themselves and to the nation. It falls upon the leaders to be visionary and realize how badly this will affect the forces in the long run.
Then focus on technology, real time warfare techniques instead of manpower intensive policies..