The lessons agencies and SMB's can draw from the epic Mig-21 Vs the F-16 dogfight

The dominant focus being the epic episode of the Dogfight leading to the shooting down of the enemy F-16, the capture and subsequent release of Brave Indian MIG – 21 Pilot. A lot of action was packed into those few days. There are lessons that small businesses and agencies especially can draw from these series of events. 

Readiness: The speed at which IAF fighters retaliated to the breach by enemy aircraft. This speed shows preparedness, which can only come from practice, process and endless training. We can mostly agree that processes face an intense dislike by employees and rarely is this dislike more open than in small organizations or in agencies. Process keeps you ready and prepared to respond as a team without floundering or loosing precious time in building synergies, overshooting TAT, miss-communicating critical commands and the series of issues of various teams working together face that prevent them from being a well oiled machine.  

Training: The reason the vintage MIG 21 brought down the F16. You may have the best equipment in the world but training ensures you can use it to best capabilities. We all hate trainings; we have almost forgotten to conduct dry runs. The client almost never has the patience for pilot programs and dry runs, and we rarely insist on them as part of the process. Training just seems like extra work, like the management is out to get us, like the agency is learning on your time and money or its simply pointless. Training always seems like a burden till the time comes when your pride, career and future depend on that split second when the training kicks and you must rely solely on trained instinct. Fortunately for most of us such situations are rarely life and death, but they are decisive for our growth and careers make no mistake about that. 

Hire for attitude and train for everything else: Anyone who every considered a career in the forces is aware of the dreaded and stringent process of hiring, aspiring officers train for months to just clear the interview board. Training, processes and everything else can prepare a brave individual for that time when split second decisions hold the future of an entire countries map in their hands, but they cannot turn a coward into a brave heart. Just like a careless attitude cannot be turned into a diligent one. When hiring most of us give attitude less than its due, we categorize it as bad, ok, good etc. etc. However we do nothing almost to align attitude into productivity. The organizations who do, scale, and how! 

Pride: if you read the news and watched the 4 videos you would have admired the poise of the Indian Pilot. What you may have missed is the story of how he confronted the villagers when he was discovered how his pro India slogans prevented him from being duped into believing he ejected into Indian Territory and gave him the minutes needed to destroy important documents. You must have seen his responses, as he almost toyed with his captors “I’m not supposed to tell you this”. This demeanor can only be achieved with pride in his country, his force and his Squadron. He is not someone who had thoughts of “kya yaar hume kya milta hai?” " mere akele se kya hoga!", "wo log toh 6:30 chale jate hain ghar", "mujhe itni bhi tankha nahi milti” etc etc running through his head. He is certainly not someone who is using “this job” as a means to hunt for something else. If you cannot generate and inculcate pride in your work, you cannot make the right moves under pressure.  

Killer Instinct: the reason that the vintage MIG pilot went after the F16 and won. He lived for the kill, It's not just survival, it is the rush of the kill. That is an acquired skill. It can be cultivated in almost anyone with consistent effort. That is what we should crave to excel in, every pitch, every campaign, every account, every effort. The killer instinct is also a weed killer, (if you get my drift), to you could just simply call it Darwin’s theory ;-). 

Knowledge: Not just knowledge of the execution (piloting the MIG) but also of the surrounding systems landscape. Our Pilot knew 1) The Geneva Convention. 2) The history of the enemy with POW’s 3) The power of the forces behind him, (I hope). Knowledge is power and more businesses should look at equipping their employees with knowledge of the legal landscape, and other functions surrounding their business in order. 

Handling pressure: Imagine the pressure of being captured in hostile enemy territory. Then compare that with the poise shown by the pilot, the way he toyed with his captors, shows an almost unimaginable capability to handle pressure. This too is a trained and cultured skill. People who flounder under pressure end up amplifying the pressure for themselves and others as stress. We spend a lot of time figuring out how we can reduce pressure from teams and people in the corporate world, and not enough time building an ecosystem, which improves their ability to handle stress and pressure. There is a need to actively empower our young talent to manage stress and pressure efficiently.  

Post facto: Most of you would have noticed that within 24 hours of re-entering India our pilot was whisked away from the media and every one else. The cooling down process or the debriefing. Another example of this (in peace time) when an aircraft crashes during training all other aircraft in the squadron get air born. This is to avoid fear of the crash settling in amongst other things. You may consider this as a 1st step to debriefing. We have almost forgotten the importance of debriefing; we immediately jump into the next without consolidating learning’s from the one we exited. We need to revive the art of debriefing it has many benefits which haven’t got their due. 

These are some of the learning’s and observations which stood out for me in this recent episode and I will be using the points above which have not received their fair due, I am sure that you would have observations of your own. Do share them as well. 

Till then may your killer instinct grow stronger and your mountain become higher yet easier to climb. 

Ambika Sharma