Tenets of military leadership apply to corporate world too

The world over military leadership -precepts and practices has a broad commonality. Take the US Military Field manuals or the Indian and Pakistani Army pamphlets or the British précis. They all by and large stress the same values: lead by example, know your job, value team spirit, the imperative of loyalty to the organisation, the importance of physical and moral courage and the capacity to take decisions. In addition military leaders are taught mission planning with given resources and its execution.

It is also universally recognised that the tenets of military leadership apply as much to corporate leadership. So it follows that good military leaders have the potential to be good corporate leaders.

A recent survey conducted by Korn/ Ferry has discovered that eight per cent of the Forbes Fortune 500 companies have CEOs who have previously served in the armed forces. The survey further discovered that companies led by CEOs with military experience have done much better than their peers when evaluated over a 10-year time frame. The study then goes on to deduce that effective management of stressful military operational situations contributes to enhancing performance in a corporate environment.

Curiously, the Indian corporate sector has yet to learn to harness the vast pool of military leaders that retire from the armed forces every year. Some random inductions have been taking place in the last few years but true exploitation of this resource has yet to begin. There is therefore clearly a case for the human resource management leaders to revisit this avenue with greater objectivity and purpose.

(The author, Lt Gen (retd) Vinay Shankar, is PVSM, AVSM, VSM and chairman - BIMHRD, SBS)