Management roles in the military - Essay Example

Management roles in the military Rajeev Bhattacharjee Academia Research The life of a military man is tough. One not only has to be ready for all eventualities, but has to very flexible in his / her capabilities to take decisions. It's true that we all get paid for taking decisions. But believe me, when one has to take decisions when one's hearts and one's brains remain at loggerheads, it gets tough. I had joined the army as a junior training officer. In doing so, I had fulfilled one of my childhood dreams of serving my country. I guess the love for my country was instilled into me from a pretty small age. My mother, who is a professor of history, always read out to me passages of the various wars our grand fathers had once fought to make our country independent. I remember the nights when my mind would take me away to those wonderful battles that my mother had read out to me. I always saw myself as a soldier who was busy giving orders to others and then suddenly hoisting our national flag signaling the victory of our troops. I know now that these dreams were all fantasies, but I guess the feeling of patriotism that I have emanates from those thoughts that were embedded in my childhood. As I joined school, all my friends could see the never say die spirit in me. It was not a very good thing to have for a fresh fellow and I remember the numerous times I landed into big problem because of this. My idea of speaking for my rights and being honest made me quite a number of enemies in school, especially in the play ground. However, since I also had a lot of friends who liked my honesty and my ability to speak the truth, I could always bear to see people getting annoyed with me. After my high school, I joined the army and graduated as a junior training officer. During my days in the army, I not only learnt how hard it is to be a military man, but also discovered how mentally strong I had become. The army not only expects one to be just physically and mentally tough, but also to discover sides of yourself you never knew. One such incident involved me supervising a platoon of medical aides in a war front. It was the onset of monsoons and our platoon was asked to provide logistic and medical support to the soldiers actually fighting the war in terrorist infested Sri Lanka. Since the M.I. room or the Medical Inspection room was situated at about three kms from the battle field, it was our duty to keep everything in the medical ready. The distance from the actual battle field is a diabolical affair. I say this because at such a distance we were not directly involved in the war and in a sense our lives were out of immediate danger. However, it also meant that the soldiers who returned back in critical conditions had lost out on precious time. Generally, the distance between the army camps and the actual war front is much lesser. However, in Sri Lanka, due to the slippery nature of the terrain and the fact that we were on the foot hills of our enemies, our seniors had taken a decision of maintaining the three kms distance. We were a group of forty eight and I had strategically kept about ten of the aides, as what I termed as 'free lancers', meaning they were always on the move to protect our MI camp. I know this may sound incredulous to many army professionals but in Sri Lanka, the enemy we were facing was of a different kind. It was more of a guerilla war rather than a conventional war, and I had to make sure that the MI remained intact from all enemy attacks. The strategic distancing from the enemy lines ruled out the range of the use of mortars by the enemy. What only remained was the use of stray fidayeen or suicide bombers who could manage to give our men at the front a slip. The freelancers had their jobs cut out. Since many villagers from the nearby villages generally collected wood from the nearby forests, it was our primary duty to keep them safe. It also meant that we had to be extra careful for the use of commoners as spies. Working in this sort of an environment I knew the importance of providing intrinsic motivation to my team as there could be an evidence of the psychological withdrawal syndrome in my platoon any time. We provided medical aid to the villagers during emergencies. And the amount of good our allopathic medicines did for those poor souls was so great that we always had bunches of villagers lining in front of the medical room every morning. We know it is our moral duty to arrange for the medicine of all these people. However, with our limited resources, it would be a tough job catering to the need of so many people. Often, we had to work round the clock and very soon the effects of this became visible in my platoon. My men started complaining of lack of sleep and most of them wanted to go back. Matters became worse as monsoons started. We soon found that we were fighting two big battles in Jaffna. One was the enemy, and the other was mosquitoes. My men began to experience severe head aches, shivering bouts of fever and nausea. Almost like an epidemic, twenty of my forty eight men were down within two days. The enemy, knowing the situation very well, began to force issues. We were taken aback by the sudden attacks and my limited sources seemed scantier with the amount of more critical soldiers coming into the medical aide centre. What I thought was the most depressing part of the war was the effect that my sick team had on the people who were actually fighting the war. Generally, the people in the MI room try to keep themselves and everyone around them happy with banters and the kind of dry humor one associate with the army. However, with the people in the MI room being sick themselves meant that the people who were catering to the injured soldiers were either sad themselves or were over worked. The general lack of mirth in the MI room meant that keeping ourselves motivated became a serious problem. One of the most famous sayings in the army is that "Wars are won in the mind". Being the supervisor of the team, it was my duty to rejuvenate my team. I began to ponder on something I had read somewhere: Human resource managers and leaders empower their followers through participation and openness as well as by making sure that they have the autonomy and the resources they need to do their jobs well. Human resource managers and leaders emphasize honest, two-way communication as a way to identify issues and resolve differences. Bolman & Deal (1991, p. 359) After much thinking I decided on a crude way of livening up the mood win the camp. I divided the platoons into four units- each having four members where each soldier, I decided had to narrate a short story in the evening. Twelve soldiers with twelve tales would may be take about two hours or at best three hours. But this would at least give all the others in the MI room a chance of knowing each other well. More than that, it would divert their attention from the pain they were in. From my class days, I had learnt that motivation is a psychological complex of two factors manifesting themselves in attitudes evident in their effects. I soon discovered that one of my cadets, a Lebanese called Timothy, had a beautiful voice. Timothy was other wise a very quiet sort of a guy who would go about doing his job in a robotic manner without saying much. But with my orders being carried out, Timothy had to tell a story one evening. He offered to sing. And boy o boy! Was he a hit! The soldiers who were down with the malarial fever were not only treated to a musical fiesta, but many joined him in his songs. As a result, the evenings were something everyone started looking forward to. But carrying out my orders also meant that there was a shortage of staffs in the evening. What I had forgotten to analyse was that in the name of cheering up the aides, I was making a compromise on the quality of the 'freelancers' as they were all caught up in the evening get togethers. After a couple of weeks, I decided to review my plan. I stopped the evening get togethers and proposed a session in the mornings after the drill sessions. Though it did not go very well with the aides, who as I have already mentioned were getting used to the evening get togethers, they certainly had no other option but to follow me. I know that being the person in charge also means that you can easily be 'other-ed' by the people who are under you. The linear structure of the authoritorial pyramid did not give me a chance to explain my stance to my juniors. So what I decided was make a big square box where people could drop in anything they wanted or any suggestion they had to make either mentioning their names or by remaining anonymous. I called this the out of the box idea. For the first couple of days, the box had nothing and I was slowly thinking about withdrawing my plan. But what I saw the next day simply cheered my heart. I got a small note from the 'Out of the box' saying WE ARE WITH YOU LEADER! UNDERSIGNED: TIMOTHY TAO. What happened in the couple of days was simply phenomenal. We not only had ideas which focused on how to use the local bamboo shoots in our food, but also on ways to beat the nuisance of mosquitoes. One idea, whose writer chose to remain anonymous, mentioned how the burning of turpentine wood could not only save us from the mosquitoes but would also help us in guarding against snake bites. The idea was simply great and no matter how hard I tried could I force out a confession as to who had this brilliant idea. The war front had got heavier and the amount of casualities pouring in also increased by leaps and bounds. Heavy rains meant that we could not keep our soldiers in the make shift camps outside as water would seep through them. Our problem got complicated by the amount of land slides which the rains brought. Our platoon had been ready for such calamities but we could never imagine what these situations were like. Many critical soldiers who had to be taken to the hospitals got stuck in the roads waiting for our men to clear the mud slides. It was at this time that I practically realised that leadership connotes an interrelationship of power - the power to give vision to others, and not just be a frontrunner. During one such afternoon, after a spell of torrential rains for two days, our camp was rocked by a hullabaloo. We realised that two of our injured soldiers who had been on ventilation had got stuck in a major land slide about one and a half kms away. Since the road was slippery and we had strict orders from our higher authorities not to leave the MI camp, we were stuck in a moral dillema. On one hand we could save the soldiers from death by bringing them back to the MI camp, and on the other, we had to wait for help to arrive from other quarters. In my platoon I had a loud mouthed aide called Jones. Though he was a nice guy to be with, he occasionally suffered from a streak of madness which simply shocked us out of our wits. On that particular day, suddenly we could see a Jeep with a trailer making its way out of the MI camp. After an instant it was realised that it was none other Jones. Since I had strict orders not to allow any of my aide's leaves the camp, I yelled at him to stop. But Jones was already too far away. A couple of hour later, we could see Jones driving the Jeep back to the MI camp with the trailer pulling the mud stained Tempo carrying the two injured soldiers. On being asked why he had done it, he remained quiet. No matter what I threatened him with, he simply kept mum. Knowing that his disobedience could cost him his career in the army, I asked Jones if he had anything to say to his defence. But he simply kept quiet. It was at this time that my mind went to the Leadership Character ModelSM developed by Robert Turknett and Carolyn Turknett in 2005 in their Decent People, Decent Company: How to Lead with Character in Work and in Life, where they prescribed Accountibility, Responsibility and Integrity as some of the characters of a leader. That night I could not sleep. As I kept walking in front of the camp, one of the aides gave me the sad news that one of the two soldiers had passed away. Not knowing what to do, I summoned Jones into my camp. A visibly sad looking Jones came to my room. Seeing his brave face trying to hide his tears, I could not help myself from extending my arm over his shoulders. "Why" I asked him softly, asking him a question out of sheer nervousness. "I don't know" said Jones. "I don't like seeing people dying. Wars cannot be won by dead people." Not knowing what to say, I simply patted Jones on his back and asked him to leave. The war continued, but we were withdrawn after three more months. As I said the rigorous tenure was over, but what I carried in my heart from this experience lies embedded within me. Well, the life of a military man is tough. Works Cited Argyris, C., & Schn, D. A. (1974). Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Barnard, C. I. (1938/1968). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1997). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice and leadership (2nd edition). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. DeCharms, P. (1968). Personal causation. New York: Academic Press. Herzberg, F., Mausner, B., & Snyderman, B. B. (1959/1993). The motivation towork. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SagePublications, Inc. Read More