Guess what’s the army’s secret to recruiting and retaining the best soldiers? Storytelling.
I did an assignment for the Indian army’s armoured regiment called the 17 Poona Horse not long ago. In the four days that I spent among the officers and soldiers the one name that kept coming up in conversations was that of Lt Col Hanut Singh. The story is that at the Battle of Basantar during the 1971 conflict he led his regiment through an uncleared minefield to take on the enemy. He had fewer tanks at his disposal. While under fire, and when things could have gone either way, he famously said, ‘Fight from wherever you are and no tank will move back even one inch.’ You guessed it, he won the battle.
But that’s not the part that makes him a legend in the regiment. The story goes that not long after the battle radio communications of the enemy were picked up where they heard them refer to him in admiration as ‘Fakhr-e-Hind’ (Urdu for pride of India.)
In America, Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller was the most decorated Marine in the history of the corps and saw action in WWII, Haiti, Nicaragua and the Korean War. His legacy lives on in the stories that are told to this day. One such story was that his booming, commanding voice could be heard over the sounds of battle. And one of his iconic quotes comes from when he and his men were surrounded by the enemy and he said, ‘All right, they’re on our left, they’re on our right, they’re in front of us, they’re behind us, they can’t get away this time.’ What seemed like a hopeless situation turned out to be the beginnings of victory. To date he is the most decorated Marine in the history of the corps.
Closer to home I had a cousin who, having applied to join the Indian army, visited Delhi for his final medical tests before he could qualify. We’d taken him out for dinner where he refused to eat because he was worried he might fail the weight test the next day. We then visited the India Gate where on the walls of that war memorial are carved the names of British Indian soldiers who died in various wars going back to the WWI. He looked up at the names and said, ‘One day my name will be up there.’ Three years later he was killed in an encounter with insurgents in the Kashmir Valley. It’s twenty years since but his colleagues meet every year in Bangalore on his birthday to celebrate his life with his widowed mother.
Every army has its heroes and their stories echo down the generations of soldiers who join their ranks. Stories of courage, grit and a never-give-up spirit in the face of bullets and often almost certain death. Stories that feed into that sense of honour of serving the nation to protect its borders from the enemy.
You realise that when a person joins the army, and indeed the airforce or the navy, they are actually staking their life on a career almost entirely on the basis of the stories of heroes and their exploits.
That’s the power, and mystique, of stories. Like the army, the best organisations have stories, starting with the company’s founding stories, that continue to attract and retain employees.
What are the hero stories in your organisation that are waiting to be captured and shared widely?
