Culture Matters!

(An excerpt from my book The Winning Culture - Lessons from the Indian Army to Transform Your Business. (currently an Amazon bestseller)

What makes the collective behaviour of the members of one organization different – often starkly so – from others? The rank and file of some companies may appear doused with an invisible elixir of self-driving motivation, just as much as the leadership at other setups laments their teams’ lack of accountability and initiative.

There is a palpable buzz of dynamism and innovation in a few while a visible pall of sluggishness shrouds the others.

When we search for answers, most stakeholders tend to ascribe this disparity chiefly to ‘money’. The generic explanation is that better-paid employees outperform those receiving lesser compensation. It is a lazy hypothesis because it is largely unexamined.

In the winter of 1999, when I was commanding a Rashtriya Rifles battalion in Kashmir’s Kupwara region, Pakistani infiltrators – mostly soldiers disguised as militants – crossed the Line of Control in the Kargil area of Jammu and Kashmir and occupied posts that the Indian Army had vacated for the winter. For decades, both armies had adhered to an unwritten understanding over vacating their respective posts for the harsh winter months. These posts are at heights ranging from 16,000 to 18,000 feet in rugged, barren and cruelly inhospitable terrain. Winter temperatures routinely drop to –48°C. Even occupying these peaks is challenging, and it is inestimably harder to attack up the forbidding slopes.

Pakistan’s strategy was breathtakingly audacious: to occupy, with careful stealth, the temporarily vacated bunkers, and thus dominate the solitary artery running from the Kashmir Valley to Leh. The severing of this strategic road would render India’s sustenance of the Leh–Ladakh area untenable. It would foment trouble between two nuclear-powered nations. And, ergo, the first whiff of an impending conflagration would attract the world community’s focus on – and even intervention into – the Kashmir imbroglio.

The Pakistani thought stemmed from another assumption. The Indian Army would be unable to recapture heights completely bereft of cover, as up-the-hill assaults would be suicidal and prone to failure even before the troops could begin the arduous climb through a hail of bullets. The line of control would thus shift forward for Pakistan.

But the eventual outcome flew in the face of those well-laid plans. The Indian Army units defied those simplistic assumptions, not hesitating to pay a huge human cost to recapture every inch of the ground. Without exception, the officers and soldiers displayed superhuman courage. I mention this fact not to tom-tom a famous victory, but merely to provide an exhibit of concerted heroism so that we can examine the fount of such extraordinary behaviour.

And what was the magnitude of that collective courage? We have an instructive insight from the diary of a thirty-year-old Pakistani officer who was deployed at those heights for seventy-seven days until he ‘withdrew’ for what Time magazine’s Asia edition described as ‘reasons he wouldn’t specify’. He told the magazine that:

"The skirmishes with the Indians started in May. In the early days, we mowed down many of them. Those Indians were crazy.

They came like ants. First, you see four, and you kill them. Then there are 10, then 50, then 100 and then 400. Our fingers got tired of shooting at them. We felt sorry for them. Sometimes, they came in such large numbers we were afraid of using up all our ammunition. There is no instant resupply, so you have to be very careful. We were always worried that we would use up all our ammunition on one attacking Indian party and would have none left when a new group came. But God was always with us. You could see lots of bodies strewn down below or in the gorges."

Could it be that notwithstanding the meticulously crafted strategy, the Pakistani endeavour failed because it had misread a vital element that drives organizational performance – culture? The Pakistani Army’s thought process betrayed a horrendous miscalculation of their Indian counterpart’s culture.

This life force called culture is the motif of our theme song throughout the book.

Every organization – company, political party, club, school and college, NGO and government department – has a culture. Indeed, so does every family. It doesn’t matter whether that culture has come about as a result of thoughtful reflection and action or has grown like untamed wild grass. Where there is community, there will always be culture. And the quality of that culture will largely sift the wheat from the chaff.

Culture is the prime mover of our collective behaviour. Its silent stream ripples just below the surface – visible here, invisible there – but powerfully guides the behaviour of every group. It is often the sole difference between winning and losing, yet many leaders are oblivious to it beyond trite clichés. Those who are aware that their organizations have ‘cultural’ infirmities struggle to craft a clear strategy for bringing about lasting change. To be sure, many organizations in the business world are shining examples of distinct and effective cultures. But they are rarities in a sea of cultural mediocrity.

Culture matters.* It matters more than most of us realize in a lifetime. The engine of culture drives human beings, rewarding them with a sense of identity they unremittingly seek. Culture lifts the burden of endless daily doubt and scepticism about the road to be taken. It lends meaning and respectability to our actions. It assures us that we only belong and flourish if we swim in unison, especially when the currents are against us.