DOES THE CORPORATE OPTIMALLY LEVERAGE MILITARY VETERANS???

Glimpse of the past.?As the chill of the mountain air sapped the residual body heat deep from my bones I felt the constant assault of myriad anxieties demand my cognitive attention. The location was the Pir Panjal Mountains along the Line-of-Control in the year 2000, and I was a company commander commanding 120 souls who had been purportedly moved into the heart of a militancy infested remote area with the grandiose mission of uprooting the established terrorist infrastructure. The day prior we had a successfully repulsed a coordinated attack by great volume of Pakistani backed militants (terrorists) without any harm to ourselves. The thoughts that invaded my mental-space were on not just how to achieve my mission spread over 160 square kilometers covering 38 villages, but also on how to ensure my logistics, keep my soldiers fed and healthy, motivate them despite obvious peril to their lives, guarantee their leave while upholding operational readiness, maintain functionality and repair of sophisticated electronics and communication equipment, monitor operations of my transport fleet with its related servicing and overhaul schedules, recycle-recategorise-replenish expired/spent explosives, ammunition, medical, material and clothing inventories, carry out audits and inspections, and keep detailed documentation of everything. While I satisfactorily reflect back on our successes, I must confess that I was just 23 years old at this time.

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Corporate Environment.????Fast forward 24 years. After 28 years in uniform, I found myself in the corporate. Over the last one year, my interactions with peers and colleagues gave me a fair understanding of corporate deficiencies when dealing with veterans. Soldiers should be ready to receive lessons on how to motivate a small team who sit in airconditioned offices working eight hours a day. After having fought in wars, led countless operations, commanded 1000+ men leading them through near-death experience, veterans will be told on how to conduct themselves as a leader. While the job descriptions in the corporate will always vocalise multi-specialty epitomes, the actual work will be abysmally low on cerebral demand relative to datums essential in military. Most work will depend on clerical efficiencies rather than deep conceptual responses. Multiple portfolio handling capabilities are likely to be suppressed and replaced by singular projects. Though pay may marginally be above the government salaries, veterans should be ready to resign themselves to work-based intellectual languor. This story will resonate over and over again in corporates and multinational companies for most veterans (in India). If you are not a part of this, be glad that you are an exception to the rule. ?

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The Root Cause. ??????The corporate environment is plagued with deniable ignorance about the depth of potential in a military veteran. It is nearly incomprehensible for a civilian mind to fathom the extreme working environments of the military. I have experienced corporate leaders nod their head (with an all-knowing attitude) confiding on how easy it is to motivate disciplined soldiers (to willingly face death), while they grappled to motivate their employees from taking sick-leaves. In a single-specialty oriented world, the corporate fails to comprehend the possibility that qualities of exceptional skills, multi-domain expertise, mental mobility and the capacity to deliver results, reside within a military veteran, honed through the years moulded in the crucible of unparalleled complexities. It is this ignorance that prevents corporates from employing veterans at senior levels where their true potential can be unleashed to achieve path-breaking results. The sentiment of risk associated in performance of veterans in ambiguous business environment stems from the obliviousness that soldiers are not just the most adaptable beings, but are also accustomed to delivering results in the most abstruse environments. In short veterans actually thrive in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous) world. Identified and selected at a very young age for ingrained qualities of high intellect, leadership, decision forming abilities and resourcefulness in perplexing situations, these virtues get consolidated through repeated exposures as the nature of battle demands innovativeness and disruptive solutions to seemingly intractable hurdles. These are the exact qualities that are in high demand in the corporate world.

Prognosis??????Most veterans prepare themselves for embracing the corporate world. Planning and training for the mission ahead is embedded within the DNA of a soldier. Corporates too need to prepare themselves to exploit the true potential of these ex-officers. The wholesome package that a soldier brings in his persona is a rarity that should not be wasted. It would be criminal to use an ingot as a paper-weight. While the temptation to recruit veterans in segmented verticals may be great, it is in higher leadership positions where their multifaceted and multi-specialty capabilities can truly accrue greater dividends. Give them the opportunity and be assured of the results. ??