Coopetition or Co-opetition is a neologism coined to describe cooperative competition.
The rivalry between my 4 Br and 5 Br company in my 67 ER was legendary. Any match between the two attracted lots of interest. It was good for the team spirit. Where it started going bad was when 5 company needed spares that were only available with 4 company, 4 refused till officers had to intervene.
I was Training Officer 2 Training Battalion where we had transformed training in ways that were beyond normal imagination. The impact of the training was that we won the cross country competition, firing competition, BPET competition, drill competition. One clarification - the goal was not winning the competition. The winning was just a byproduct of the competition. In fact for the 16 km cross country event we took the recruits out only twice and that too to familiarize with the route. Our competitors 1 Training Battalion would be on the route twice a week for 2 months.
And then one day we decided that we would share all our training methodologies with our competition.
Why?
Our primary customer was our troops, but our secondary and important customer was the country. Our recruits had an advantage over the others. Sure it helped us win competitions, but our mission was not winning competitions. We had the Training Officers and Training JCOs of the unit battalion watch our training and they were free to borrow whatever they needed from us. No conditions.
Did we gain anything in return from them - apart from goodwill not much. But we watched recruits of BEG improve. And we know that someday we will learn their best practices too.
In your units you have 3 or 4 field companys. And each company has certain drills / standard operating procedures that makes them excel. Be it firing, drill, PT, inspections, maintenance - people at ground level keep innovating all the time. Co-optetion will help each company better itself.
Formalize the co-optetion. Your unit will benefit. And if I extend the logic to battalion level competitions, the brigade will benefit and at the highest level - the services will benefit.
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3 comments:
hi sandesh,
presently i am at the same trg centre in PC coy. what you did was very good at that time and may be continued for 2-3 yrs but now its back to square one. our main problem is continuity. the whole show is run by one man. if his KRA is flower show or ladies clubs, you get isolated or are given names. not that one is afraid of names or isolation but all of us cannot be S C Sheth. so my question to you is how do we put these methods in system so that you they do not vanish in thin air when one Sandesh Sheth goes.
regards K N
Thank you Lt Col K N for reading and commenting. I request you to comment on every of my post, so that I can improve.
In one of the posts I clarified that I could do what I did because I was on my way out of the army having put in my papers. I was only bothered that I train the troops to my best standards. And I was very lucky to have Col Ravi Deshmukh who saw, appreciated and pushed me to my limits by offering me total freedom to perform and guidance. And I was always a bit difficult throughout my career as I wanted to see how to make things better and keep learning whenever possible.
In another of my posts I mentioned that we need process maturity. And unless that happens, it is a one man show. And that is what I am worried about.
The solution that I see is that each of us keeps trying to improve whatever we can. After all I changed almost everything that I inherited and someone will redo what I did. Maybe I was wrong sometimes and maybe my successor would be wrong. But as long as we keep the cycle of improvement working, things will improve.
Maybe it may not happen with one Sandesh Sheth or K N but if other officers read my posts, your comments, someday the top cadre of the officers would be someone who have understood what business army is in, what is process maturity, what is leadership and then things will flow top down. Till then we have to make things flow bottom up.
I request you to share the blog with all other officers. I dont mind criticism because I could need course correction too. Presently the idea is to get the momentum built up to reach a critical mass.
I once wrote a paper on new physical fitness methods and sent it to Army HQ, ASPT everywhere. I guess it got filed. Not everything works in our circle of concern. But everything works within our circle of influence. So let us start with our circle of influence.
Thank you once again. And please share our thoughts with others.
Dear KN
Did you get a chance to share this blog with other colleagues in BEG and your course mates if any? I request you to spread the word, so that I have a critical mass of officers who can make a difference.
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