Life Coach - Step 50 of 100 - A mercenary army in a way?

One of the problems I have seen is that in the end it is the CO's army literally. If the CO does not take interest, no one (majority) is interested.

There will always be exceptions, my training JCO Paras Nath at 2 TB was one. He had no further promotions, no appraisals to bother about and no axe to grind. But he contributed so much to the training. There will always be such individuals who want to do the best irrespective of the circumstances. They do it for themselves alone.

But the majority is unlike that. If we make PT voluntary, how many will turn up. Or let me put a reverse spin on this, if before the Colonel takes command - he finds out that he has very less chance of next promotion - how much effort will he put.

So in this mercenary army of ours - the soldiers work because they are paid to work and we have someone to supervise them (patriotism exists - but I would defer that to the field area where the soldier is directly facing the customer or sees the output of his labour. But even in a field area how many soldiers would volunteer to go patrol operations when it is cold, raining, it is night or would bother as to how many kills did we get this month. Things will change drastically for better in case of a war - where every soldier is motivated and would volunteer for any mission)

Back to the mercenary thing - so how do we motivate this person so that he can work without supervision. The answer is simple, yet difficult to implement if we dont let it happen.

The answer is " Think Lean". I would request you to ponder on what "Think Lean" means till my next blog.