 So we are going live. It's being reported automatically. Okay. Good evening, friends. It's always a challenge to understand that how do you build a team and retain a team. These two facets are of the same coin, but how do you do that? It's always one wants to understand that and who else can better explain than Major General Neeraj Bali, who is known for his short skills coaching while he was in the army and thereafter. You all know that he's a sentimental and then he's a life and leadership coach. And off late, he's also writing a book. Plus he has taken various articles which have been published in different newspapers. In one of the sessions by a close friend of mine, Mr. Nadeep Singh, had helped me to connect with him and that day itself, a lot of participants asked us that why don't you bring Major General Neeraj Bali when he knows how to hammer the things. And that made us connect with him. And it's always a pleasure learning from a person who has his personal experiences how to build a team and how to retain that team. I request Major General Neeraj Bali to take over the session. Thank you very much, Rukas. Thanks for the opportunity. Now, let us look at the topic of this talk. Secrets of building teams and retaining teams. So I mean, is there a secret to it? The fact of the matter is that all my life, especially after I was retired and I've been CEO of two different companies. I have heard countless people talk about teamwork, team building, team management and so on and so forth. And more often than not, what I hear is we lack teamwork, we lack coordination, we lack cooperation. People don't assist each other. I hear this even from top management all the time. So there is obviously, there's got to be a secret to it. And why do I say secret? Because I come from an organization, the Indian Army, which thrives on teamwork. We would be nothing without teamwork. So therefore, let me say that surely there are some secrets. Maybe those secrets are in plain sight. Maybe we all know it. Maybe we don't. Maybe our lack of awareness or ego doesn't let us learn from there. Let me start by asking this question. Why do we need this teamwork at all? Some of us are working with just two people or three people. Why do we need teamwork? The answer is obvious. There is nothing you can achieve alone. And because you are the head of something, even if you are in charge of a lift and you have two people working under you, you are in the language of the Army. You are some sort of a commander. You are some sort of a team leader. If you want to achieve something, you know, you require a lot of hard work, a lot of sacrifice to get there. But does your team understand that? In a world where everybody seems to be working for money for the salary at the end of the month or for, you know, for appraisal. Does your team understand? Do they have the same passion, the same goal, the same thing that you as a team leader or as the owner or as a manager or as a managing director have? And that is why you need to learn these, what I call these secrets. Now, first of all, what does a champion team look like? You know, everybody can look good on a good day. When things are going well, you're sitting in a drawing room or living room, you're sitting in a bar, you're chatting around, everything looks nice. Everyone can be nice. But champion teams are the ones that look good on bad days, which are willing to hold their own and produce results a little bit like take your mind back again like the Indian Army. We're not meant for the best days. We are meant for the worst days. Secondly, champion teams believe in themselves. They don't, they believe that in the end, no matter what happens, they will win. Thirdly, and this is very important, every member of champion teams looks after each other. You know, one of the biggest problems we have in the corporate sector when I say we because I find myself a part of the corporate sector is that we treat every relationship as transactional. Today you are part of my project, we are buddies, and after that it's over. Every relationship in the Army is relational. Right now on this talk, I can see a few of my colleagues who I hesitated to call my colleagues, they are like family members. The relations has remained. And finally, the members of a good team, a champion team, like coming to work. Now, if you're a boss, ask yourself, do your members like coming to work? Do you like coming to work? Or do you get up every morning and when you're getting into the car or a metro, as you say? I don't know where I'm stuck. Today is another day of trouble. Right? So this is the big difference between how a great team feels and how everyday teams feel. Right. Before I go any further, the other thing I hear all the time is, you know, I would have done great if I had a great team. What is a great team? I'll tell you from my life's experience, what is a great team? If you have 5% to 10% outstanding members and 85 to 90% members who are all right, good, hardworking, who can be improved, can be trained and 5% trouble creators who will never change, you should go to the temple or the Gurdwara wherever you want to go and thank the Lord. That's the best you will get. I don't understand leaders who say, I wish I had a better team. I wish, you know, then I would have been, then why do we need you? Leaders are required to pull up that 80 to 85% people who are there, who have the goods, who have the potential and who can be improved. Please take this as a template. 5% people to 10% people. If you have great, you got to be thankful. You got it made. All right, let me start with the story. There are going to be a number of stories today, so pay attention. Let me start with a story about a teamwork. This story goes all the way back to 1990s. This is the area of Kubwara in JNK and it's along the borders. This is the Rajiv Battalion and there's a young second lieutenant, 21 year old or a lieutenant by the name of Padma Pani Acharya. He's given the task to go along the ridge line, which is full of snow by the way, it's 12,500 feet and above. You can barely walk without getting out of breath. And he's told, take 10 people, 10 soldiers and go from one point to the other. It'll take you two days, one day to go, another to come. And just to make sure that there are no Pakistanis infiltrating across the line of control. So young Acharya sets out on his mission and the moment they leave, the weather becomes terrible. It starts snowing heavily, visibility is next to nil, they can't even see each other, but of course they carry on moving. They're moving in a single file, which means in one line. And who do you think is in front? Lieutenant Acharya. This is not the tactics, as per the tactical teaching, it's not the commander who's supposed to be number one. I want you to pay attention to this because I'll come back to some lessons. So Acharya is right in front, because the visibility is bad, nobody can see anything. So he's leading the team physically. And then after about half a day, they discover that half the team is lost. There are only five people left and five people have just got separated and they are lost in some blizzard. So they talk to each other and Acharya says, let's turn around and locate those five. When you turn around, you can't even see your footsteps. But maintaining a certain direction, they start looking around. In the meanwhile, the radio set of the team dies. When it is very cold, the batteries tend to die quickly. And the team now is, the patrol is now out of contact with the battalion. So the commanding officer, when he discovers after a day that they can't talk to the patrol, he says, I'm going to launch another patrol in the same bad weather to find the first one. But his boss, the commander says, don't do it. It's full already. Nobody can see anything right now. You'll be risking 10 more people. But the commanding officer says, I'm sorry, I'm going to disregard your instructions. I am going to launch a team because in the army, you do not leave anybody behind. So a second patrol is also launched. In the meanwhile, Acharya patrols the five people, find the remaining five people. They try to make progress. Things get worse. And finally, the night falls. What do you think they do at night? In order to make sure that they don't get buried under the snow, they sit in a circle and Acharya says, let's keep gently slapping each other so that we stay awake. Remember, this was a two-day patrol. This goes on for seven days. Obviously they would have run out of food. For seven days, the situation, it remained deteriorated and things kept getting bad. Now, after seven days when the weather cleared a little, Acharya said, maybe somebody will see us from another ridge. So you know what he does? He takes his clothes off, takes off the dry part of the clothes and sets them on fire to attract attention. And sure enough, the second patrol sees this and these people are finally located and they are contacted and they all come back hungry, tired, sleep deprived, but in high spirits. Now, I told you the story because it has some lessons. The first is, in a great team, everybody takes care of each other. Now, whatever I'm telling you is not some political talk. It's not some sweet-sounding Jalebi type of talk. It's a reality. If you're not going to take care of each other, forget about having a good team. Secondly, no matter what happens, you've got to stick to your objective. Good teams don't give up. And third thing, which is the most important lesson for each person listening today. There can be no good team without great leadership. So first, owners of creating a great team is directly on to you. Are you willing to be left in an Padma Pani, Acharya or not? If you're not, then this is just a talk. Now, I tell similar stories. There are some terrific stories. And all these stories, by the way, are not stories of people who want Param Vir Chakra. These are stories of ordinary people like you and me. And one of the questions I always look at the people's faces when I'm doing it face to face. I see a doubt on their face and they say, but I am an advocate. I don't face these circumstances. How is this story relevant to me? Or I work in State Bank of India. What the hell is this story got to do with me? It's a great story, very inspiring. But what is the connection with me? I'll answer that question. So the question I ask my audience is, the day somebody joins the army, what is the difference between the people who joined the army and those who join other walks of life who become doctors or work in a bank or join the railways or become a teacher or become an advocate? What's the difference at the point where we all join these two different professions or two types of professions? The answer I usually get is, you people are more patriotic. Nothing is more nonsensical than this answer. You can ask any fogee. I never heard the word patriotism in my life. You are more dedicated. How? We come from the same small towns, same villages, same places. How are we more dedicated? You know what the answer is? The day somebody joins the army or the day somebody becomes a lawyer or a banker or whatever, there is no difference except perhaps for some character quality which is judged by the interviewer. Beyond that, there is zero difference. You want proof? All right. When I joined the army, I was 16. The day I went for my interview, I had never spoken one single sentence of English. I came from a Punjabi medium school. I read, write, understand Punjabi better than I do anything else. I came from a low middle class family. Part of my life was spent in one room house. How are we different from anybody else? So what is the difference? I'll tell you what is the difference. There are two differences. The magic that happens happens after people joined the army. Before that, there is no magic. One part of the magic is that the army changes your mindset. There is a good news. Your mindset is in your hands. So whatever I'm going to tell you after this, you, my effort can change that mindset. And the second difference is army has a distinct culture which drives people in a certain direction. If you're a leader, even the culture business is in your hands. And that is what leads to superb teamwork like the kind I told you. So we're going to talk about three things. Just three lessons. Three things you got to keep in mind and all of them are going to have stories. First, create great teams. Create a sense of common purpose. I'll come to that. Second, provide outstanding leadership. And third, build a great culture. All right. So these are the three things we are going to talk about. Let's start with the first one. Create purposefulness. Now there is the same. You can either be an owner or a slave. In most teams, members of the teams do not share the same sense of purpose as the leader. The leader wants to succeed. Managing directors of the companies want fantastic top line, fantastic bottom line, lovely pad, whatever. And what they are noticing is that the members of the team are treating it as like another job. They're coming at 9 o'clock and going back at 5 o'clock. At 1.30, they're opening a tiffin. Does your team understand that what their real role is? And that role, they will not understand my lectures, by the way. You can't stand on a dais and say, gentlemen, we are like a family and we have to do this and that. It won't work like that. But first of all, let's understand what is that role I'm talking about? What is that sense of purpose I'm talking about? Let me give you an example with a story. All the stories are true. I don't like telling personal stories, but this one is personal. So I commanded a Rashtriya Rifle Battalion in Kashmir from 1997 to 1999. There was fair amount of insurgency in those days, a lot of militants. And to those of you who are not aware, Rashtriya Rifle Battalions have only a single mandate to kill militants, kill terrorists. So one of my companies was going out in the jungles for two days, searching for militants. There was some information. And I as a CO decided to just tag along, not to interfere, but just to go along. I used to go for all operations. So we went up in the jungles and we roamed around for two days or God knows, two and a half days and we found nothing. And then we came down the hill into the place where the company was living in tents. By the time we reached, it was already late in the evening at 39 o'clock. And the company commander said, sir, your headquarters is two hours away. Why don't you have dinner and go? I said, sure. So we decided, I said, why don't we just go down to the Langer and find what is, what are the Jamans getting to eat? Okay. So the cookhouse and army is called Langer. And the man who looks after that Langer is called Langer commander. Everything is commander in the army. Langer commander is just a Sepoy or a last night. He's not a senior guy. So as I went there, I found that Jamans were beginning to line up. And the food had, it was a normal food. There was dal, there was sabzi, there was chawal, there was roti, there was salad. So I called the Langer commander and I said, beta, we were out for two, three days. Why didn't you make something better today for the Jamans? He said, sir, what did I, I couldn't have done it because we didn't get anything in the supply today. The chicken came in the supply and the eggs came in. So I told the company commander, give him 500 rupees, 1000 rupees. Tell him to take three, four boys with weapons, go to two or three villages and get all the eggs possible, buy all the eggs and let them be eggs. Make them right now. And the Jamans who were lining up, I told them, go back to your tents. Everybody gets two bags of rum free from me. You have a drink and I have a drink somewhere and by the time the eggs are going to be made and then you enjoy your meal. Next morning I came back to this company and I called the same Langer commander and I asked him the question that I was asking you. I said, tell me, what is your role? He said, sir, my role is to make food. I said, make good food, make bad food, make something fall into it, make it tasty, there is no content in it. So this Langer commander realized that he was catching him. So he said, no, sir, my role is to make good Swadisht or hygienic food. Now there was improvement. I said, but your pay is not going to change. Whether you make good food or bad food, then why should you bother about good food? He said, no, no, sir, when I make sure the food is good, then Jamans's morale goes up. You know, in Hindi they say, murla upura jata haun ka. They get more motivated. So I said, you are not the Prime Minister of the country. Why are you bothered about morale? Your pay is not going to increase. Why are you concerned about morale of this Jabat? So he looked a little surprised. He said, sir, aise thoda hai. Mai agar achha khana banau nga, tasty khana banau nga, jamano ka morale ucha hoega, to yeh bahar jaa ke terrorists ko marain ke. I said, that is your damn role. Your role is not making chapatis. You are helping kill terrorists. That is the purpose of your job. Every time you enter the langar, think this. Ke mai jo karne jaar haun, aise lagko ne jaar ke terrorists marne hain. And while I didn't say this, the fact is every langar commander who is making good food is helping India win the war. You don't have to say, you don't have to go that far. But do we even understand this role? I am advisor to a company today. Okay, I go and talk to workers there. Do we understand what their role is? What are they contributing? What are they really doing? You ask them, betta tara kya kama hai? Sir, mera kama hai. Sir, mai iss machine pe kama kar thaun. So that's your job description. That's your job description. It's the difference between a teacher who says, haan ji, teacher saab aakwa kya kama hai? Mera kama hai. Mera kama hai. Mai hai school ataun. Aur mujhe syllabus complete karna hai. Aur ladokon ko pass karna hai. That's one teacher. Second teacher, aapka kya role hai? Sir, roll kya hai? Mera bada hai. Important role hai, sir. Mai na hi ladokon ki sivgi banani hai. Aur in me se, kamsa kama teacher logon gay to highest level pe jain. Kiye mera role hai. The difference between the two is going to be stark. What is your role? And does your team understand what is their role? The understanding of your role is going to make all the difference in the world. It will lift you from ordinariness to greatness. It will lift you. So the question you have to ask yourself is, when I come to work, or when my team members come to work, what are they thinking? Are they thinking I am an employee? Or are they thinking I am the owner of my desk? I am the CEO of whoever I am. What does it look like? This business of understanding your role. Let me tell you another story. This is the water guards battalion which was in Siachen. Now, all of you know what Siachen is. You can say it's Hell on Earth in some ways. The temperature is going down to minus 50 degrees. It's something you cannot even begin to imagine what life there is. So on one particular day, in this particular battalion, the Pakistanis did some shelling from across the line of control, some artillery shelling, and they killed two Javans of this battalion or three Javans of this battalion. On the same day, a message came that the Subedar Major of the battalion, the Subedar Major is the senior most Javan. He's like a CEO. He's only one. The Subedar Major of the battalion, Javan Singh, his daughter, who was in 20s, had died in an accident. So the adjutant called the Subedar Major and told him, then he gave him the news, so Subedar Major started crying. He cried and cried because it was such a shocking news. And then the adjutant said, don't worry, the weather is bad, but the weather will flare up. The CO is organizing a helicopter. We will send you down from the helicopter down to the base. From there, we will send you, you can take a flight to wherever Chandigarh. From there, you can take another flight to Soinsu Place, Delhi. From there, you can take a train and we have calculated. Then you take a bus and you'll be well, you'll be in home well in time for the cremation. So after he started crying, Subedar Major Javan Singh said, Sir, what happened is the worst day of my life. But sir, even our boys are dead today. They are also our family. So sir, I will first funeral them. So Subedar Major Javan Singh climbed the post which took him 24 hours, oversaw the cremation, which took two days because there is no oxygen. The mortal remains take time to burn. There is very little wood. And after doing everything for three days, nicely, then he walked down again and then he went home. This is what a person who understand his role looks like. Again, it's not a story of somebody who got a medal. It's a story of another person. So I wanted to make these points to begin with. So you understand my role, role, role, what I'm talking about. What is the sense of purpose? So how do you craft the role? First you have to understand how should you do it? Then you can tell your team to do it. First thing, please remember, how do you define your role? As much as you define your role narrowly, narrowly like, what is my role? I'm an advocate. That is my role. The narrowly you define it, the less people will follow you. People who work in corporate sector, who think their role is to take care of their own personal self, to make sure to get good appraisals, to take care of just the family members, three, four, five people. You know how many people follow them? Same three, four people. Nobody else. Everybody else is doing, hello sir, good morning sir. Sir, you are very nice, but they're not following them. People who say, no, I have to take care of my team. This team must prosper so long as they are under me. You know who follows them? The whole team. And then there are people who say, I have to take care of my team, but I also live in this society. I must take care of my, at least the society where I live. There's few buildings and I must take interest in this well-being. How many people follow them? That's society. Imagine if Mr. Modi was to say, I, my role is, what is my role? To win elections? To go to the fist? That's all? What role can you play? Who would be following him? The second thing is, when you are thinking of your role, please remember, let us say you are, you are a teacher. I'm just giving an example. Your boss, the management is not judging you as a teacher. This is a fundamental mistake we make. The management is looking at you. Are you big enough, competent enough to fulfill the next step? Can you be made a principal? This is how you look at your role. Am I just doing what I'm doing? A lot of people are doing a great job wherever they are. But the management is looking at you, if I make him senior, if I give him a department, will he be able to handle it? So unless you enlarge your role, how is the management going to look at you like that? I've seen a lot of people who say, I work so hard. I work so hard. I work so hard. I work so hard. I work so hard. You work so hard in your present job, in your present designation. But you're not understanding people who want to promote you, are wanting to know, they're anxious to know, will you fill the next role? And thirdly, your role should be such that you become a role model. Are you a role model? Are you a role model even to your own children? I'm sure many of you are. I'm very certain many of you are role models in your own teams. This is just a question, not a criticism. But these are the questions you have to ask yourselves. Am I a role model? Or am I just another person doing what everybody else does? The last point on this issue. You may say, but why do I have to be a role model? I can be fine. I go to the office. I come from office. I'm earning my pay. I get appraisals. What's the problem with extra effort? I'll tell you a secret. There comes a time in your life, especially after you retire, when you begin to have a doubt, is life over? And the next doubt is, what did I do? What did I do? Have you seen people who become chief justices, who become generals, who become senior managers in banks? When they are serving, they think everybody's going to remember me. And six months after their retirement, they find nobody remembers you. Nobody remembers you because you were another person. You were just another person taking care of yourself. My yardstick is this. I have a granddaughter. My yardstick is this. When she grows up and says, Dadaji, what did you do when you were in the army? I shouldn't have to say, what did I do? Let me think. What did I do? I didn't do anything special. I did. We used to go to the office. We used to go to the office in the evening. Be prepared because the day this question is confronted, it'll be too late. So my advice to you is this. The life that you're leading, the work that you're doing. You are the hero of your own story. You are the script writer. You are the director. You are the producer. And God knows you're also the villain. Please write the good story. Understand your role become larger than life. You will have plenty to talk about when you lean back in your sofa set after retirement, you'll say, my life is not good. My work is not good. Don't you want that satisfaction? Start with purposefulness. Start with your understanding your own role. Only then you will instill this in your team. We come to the second point. Provide outstanding leadership. You know, I have an uncle who's rich. Everybody should have a rich uncle. One day I asked him, I said, I want to buy a house. There's only one house I bought in my life. I said, I want to buy a house. Is there any advice? He said, you must see three things when you buy a house. Location, location and location. You want to learn about leadership? There are three things to do. Lead by example, lead by example, lead by example. If you want to forget all the remaining talk, you want to forget all the stories about leadership, please remember this one. You cannot be a leader without leading by example. You can't even be a damn good father or husband because people will, you know, people will do namaste, touch your feet. Sir, all that happens to all of us, by the way. But deep inside, people do what you do. People do not do what they say. If saying was the magic, then so many CEOs and MDs have seen who stand on the stage and say gentlemen, we have passion. We are the company. We are customer centric. We are employee centric. We are like a family. And everybody standing there says, then will you stop talking? Okay. Now the question comes, when should we lead by example? This question was actually asked by somebody. He said, okay, but when should you lead by example? When you have a project, when you are on a task or when? The answer to this question was given to me by a 4G barber. His name was Naik Rootlau. I knew the answer, but I have never forgotten it after he told me. And here is the story. 4th of June 1997, almost 26 years ago, one morning we were going in a convoy of cars. The road was rough. It was a track. There was a hill on one side, a field on the other side and a river in Kupada. The militants had planted a lot of explosives under that road. It is called improvised explosive device. They press it and then the wire comes out of it. There is a small mechanism. There is a small antenna and they sit on the hill in the line of sight. They have a VHF transmitter or a radio set and the vehicle comes on top of that. They just press it and you are blown. So my vehicle had already gone over it. I was already 10 minutes ahead. Maybe they were not there at that time or it didn't work or whatever happened. The next vehicle, after 10 minutes of my battalion, got blown up. I had just met those people. That vehicle went up so much that there were eucalyptus trees on the side. It took two turns and smashed against the road. One major and two Jovans died instantly. One young lieutenant and two of his two soldiers, they were badly injured and trapped inside that steel. The militants started firing on it. They thought, let's kill everybody and take away their weapons. We heard the bank. We said, the whole district heard the bank. We turned our vehicles around. Then somebody said, don't go into the cars. They would have put an ID like that. They will blow you up. So we started running towards the firing. All of us were carrying AK-47. I was also carrying an AK-47. One major was running with me. On the other side was this barbar group. So this major, his name was Dev Anand Singh Loha Maror, he stopped me. If you have seen the senior officers of the army, they put a red thing on their colonels. They call it a collar dog or whatever. But that is to be worn only in these stations. It is not supposed to be worn in war places or where you are finding militants or Kashmir. I was there for ten days. So they said, sir, take it off. Once we reach there, they will know you are the CO and they will take an aim at you. And I said, yeah, I will take it off. But I did not take it off immediately because my mind was full of many things. We were still running and we heard on the radio set that some people had died. We were still running and this barbar group lost, stopped me. And he said, sir, may I talk to you? I stopped. I said, yes, go ahead. He said, sir, what Mr. Mejwaj talked about, he talked about a lot of things. He said, I will tell you his exact words. He said, sir, now he will kill you. Then he will not be able to escape. So, sir, what is the problem? He should not wear it. I said, yes, stop. I understood. I will take it off. He said, no, no, no, sir. This is not my advice. This is my advice. Do not take it off today. In fact, sir, do not take it off for three months. Sir, you are a leader. You are a commander. The young people should not be suspicious. Two or three people die and SEO gets worried. You have to give examples. Can you think of a more beautiful, more powerful, more wonderful advice? A young man of the army is telling his CEO, die if you have to. But do not set a wrong example. This is how deep is the knowledge of leadership in the army among people. And why should we do that? Because only when you do this, people follow you. You think these javans who are following army officers in Kargil, 450 people have died. People were following people on the slopes. They are following just like that. Do you know there is no praiser in the army? There is no bonus at the end of the year. There is no extra money for getting shot. People are still following, no? Same countrymen because they know that their leaders will take more trouble, more risk than them. And only when you do that, your team starts becoming, they start to becoming feel safe. I'll come back to this word. One of the biggest motivators is when your team feels safe under you. Have you seen bosses whose team is under them? I don't know what will happen. When the bonus comes, they will let down. The day you get in trouble, they will let me down. The day you get in trouble, they will let me down. Have you seen those bosses? I'm sure you've seen them. They are the ones who don't have a good team. Teams want to feel safe. That he'll protect me. He'll protect my job. He'll protect my appraisal. He'll be fair. He'll be fair when there's trouble. When there's trouble, he'll support me. And how will you do it? If the team sees that you are scared, you are scared. That is the advice I took from Rooplal. And in his honor, I did not remove those collar dogs for three and a half years. I haven't removed them for three and a half years, until I was in Kashmir. And a lot of people used to say, why don't you take them home? I said, if Rooplal tells you something, I'll do it. It's okay. And I'm happy to report that I didn't die. Okay. So therefore, please lead by example. This is how you'll create a great team. Please make your people feel safe. Please be fair. If you are biased, if you don't like somebody's face, or you don't like somebody because he's not your type, or you don't like somebody because he talks back, if you are unfair, 100%, your team will have gossip and politics. Have you heard? You have politics in our company. Politics? Because people think, apart from that, you don't have to work. You don't have to work with fairness. But if the appraisal system is transparent, if everybody is going to be rewarded based on his performance, KPIs, KRS, whatever, things will be fine. No, we don't have to work. He knows the boss. He's working in his village. He was already working in an old company. And then we have big politics and gossip. Be fair. This demotivates people. It breaks up the teams. Clarity of communication and roles. Everybody should be clear what his role is, what is he going to do. There are a lot of bosses who purposefully give confusing orders because they're not clear. They're not clear. You want a great team. People are hungry for specific orders, even in the army. People are hungry for specific orders. Remember that. They want bosses who have the dumb, the courage to say the right thing and to say, do this. And I am responsible. And the last point is, and this is a surprising one. You may not have heard this. The way to create hardworking, high-achieving teams is to let them work, to stop having these damn meetings. The number one demotivated today's world and corporate sector I watch is disrupting workflow. At the drop of the hat, the boss says, let's have a meeting here. Call everyone. Call anyone who doesn't have work. Coordination will happen. Stop it. Have a rule. The moment you disrupt the workflow, the high achievers will not work. Because when you get engrossed in some work, those of you who like to paint or do something, you get engrossed in that work. You are in a flow. What if somebody disrupts that flow after every half an hour and says, come in. Do not disrupt the workflow. Now the question comes. All right, this is great. But then there are people who don't work. What should I do as a leader? As a team, should I be jazz? Should I not say much? No. The secret to correcting mistakes is this. Remember, all mistakes are not equal. If somebody has made an error of judgment, what is the error of judgment? Somebody decided to take initiative and did a certain thing. Maybe you were not there. Maybe you had given him... Maybe he had gone out of station. He does something which is not as per what you wanted. But he did it with the best intention and he took initiative. Such errors should be completely overlooked. All you should do is tell him, okay, you did it right. But next time ask me. Or do it like this. No, don't say ask me. Because if you don't do that, if you start bullying people who are because of error of judgment, nobody will take initiative in your department or in your company. Why will they take it? If they are going to be bullied for taking initiative? So what will happen is, you want tigers. But what are you creating? Rabbits. Second is error of omission. Error of laziness. Which is the maximum error. People don't do things. You know, when I was serving, sometime when I gave a task, the officer would come and say, Sir, actually I will tell you how it is to be done. I say, no, no, no, no. Half the objections are because people don't want to work. First please do it. So when there is error of laziness or omission, such people should be pulled up. And third is error of intention. These are the three ways to deal with errors. I'm going to quickly make the last two points in this leadership business and then we'll close with the culture bit. Great teams, as a leader remember, great teams are also made when you select the people properly and onboard them properly. What should you look for in the candidate the most? Learn from the young. You know, everybody looks at their background, their knowledge, their experience. Why is he leaving the last company? How many companies has he served? What is his education? What does he look like? How's his communication? Great. Please look at his character. Which means look at his attitude. Is that easy to see? No. No. In one or two rounds of interview, it's very hard. I would recommend take on a good biometric. Psychometric, sorry, not biometric. Psychometric. It is the attitude which is going to give anybody the attitude. Secondly, when you are recruiting a person or when he comes and joins, forget about what impression he's making. What impression are you making? Have you seen companies where a man comes for selection or recruitment and is sitting on the reception for three hours? Or after he is applied, nobody replies to him for the first 10 days. Or after he is paid for the interview, nobody tells him the outcome for 20 days. Forget his impression. You have given him the clear impression that your company is Lila. Here, there is no delay. There is no delay. And when they join, please do not treat onboarding as a tick mark. Make sure they are actually shown everything. Make sure they are properly briefed, even formally briefed by everybody with presentations. Give them a professional feel. Give them a great start. The last point on this segment is about attrition. A lot of people say, you know, when I was CEO, first time, when people used to leave, I used to say, why have they left? The HR used to give you just one line. Sir, that's a lazy answer. Do people work for money? Sure. Yes, money is important. But do people only work for money? No. Nobody wants to leave a company and disrupt his life when he is just settling down. Nobody wants to see me to look bad. That is jumping from company to company. You know why people leave? People don't leave jobs. People leave bosses. People always leave bad bosses. What is a bad boss? Not only a boss who is sarcastic, who is, you know, nasty, who violates human dignity by doing gali galoch, by bullying, by nitpicking. Those are of course bad bosses. But also those bosses who don't understand that people below them are suffering. So there was a particular project in Bihar, one of the infrastructure project. My company was an engineering company. People were leaving from there. I went there. I interviewed everybody from Chaiwala to TopGai. You know what I discovered? The villain was admin manager, a junior guy who was not listening to anyone. Everybody's admin was bad. The manager there, the leader, didn't bother. So the question you should ask is, am I the type of boss people love to meet when they come in the morning? Are you okay? Now you don't have to be popular for the sake of popularity. Happiness is not the goal of running a company. The goal is to achieve results. But happiness is a damn good idea. How about in the last segment? Build a great culture. What is culture? Culture of a company is, first of all, every company has a culture. Okay? Whether you make it or you don't make it, it's all about culture. Political parties have a culture. Clubs have a culture. Companies have a culture. Forge has a culture. And forge has a great culture. So when you walk into, say, a government office and you want some work, and the guy says, first of all, the person is late. He's at 10. He's at 10. Then he keeps his bag somewhere. Then he comes back and says, it's like this. You won't get the file today. You'll get it after a week. Now you go to a private sector company. You go to a private sector bank. Is the response the same? No. You fly Indigo. You've seen the company. You've seen how focused they are on time. You know why? That's the culture. Culture is what people think works. If gossip works, there'll be a culture of gossip. If you allow people to talk loosely, that'll be the culture. If you allow people to come late, that'll be the culture. So please remember the great saying that Peter Drucker said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. You can make any fancy plan in this world. It will not work unless the people who are following it, the culture follows it. And where does the culture come from? You. From the top. When I say you, I mean from the top. Especially in family or business. Culture comes always from the top. It is not like it doesn't work against gravity. Okay. Culture is what people say. This is how it works. Indian army, this great organization runs on that culture. I can give you a million examples. I'm going to tell you one-on-one story and then I'll wind up and you will realize what it is. So how should you create a culture? First of all, you have to know what you want to create. Which parts you want to fix? After you've decided you have to communicate clearly to your team. Look punctuality is not a strong point. We are going to be punctual or quality has not been our culture. We are going to focus on quality or whatever. There is too much gossip. Next man who gossips, I'm going to cut his appraisal. But most importantly, you have to set a personal example. You cannot say Mr. Vijay Malia and say, Mr. Vijay Malia was telling his company King Fisher, we are losing money, please cut costs, be austere, work with less. And then people saw him coming out of his own jet on his God knows which birthday was it and go up, spending lakhs of rupees. The Walmart CEO, when he comes to India, what he does? One of the things he does as a demonstration is, he walks around and he picks some dustbin and he puts his hand inside, takes out the papers and he points out if there is a paper on one side, it's blank. He says, yes, please use this because Walmart culture is to cut costs. I've done a detailed study of Indigo. It's part of my book that is getting published in the next two, three months. The book is not about Indigo buyer. It is about culture. And I've done a detailed study. They are setting example at every level of being in time. Secondly, your culture will not become culture unless it is part of every process, every SOP, every procedure, every reward, every punishment. You want this culture, then give reward to people who are following it and punish people who are not following it. You remember the case of an officer, an Indian Army officer who tied a Kashmiri in front of his vehicle. He was trying to save some CRP of Jawans because people were throwing stones. He tied a Kashmiri. Okay, not supposed to be done probably. A lot of Hala Gullo on television, an Indian Army is using people as human shield, this, that. What did the chief do? He gave it off a certain medal. I know why he gave it. He said, he's our boy. We trained him. He took initiative. If I punish him, nobody will take initiative. This is not our culture. An officer next year was found with a woman in a hotel in Kashmir where he was not supposed to be. What did the Army do? They court-martialed him because the second was an error of intention against the culture of the Indian Army. You don't mess with women. So it must be reflected in what you do. Right? For example, in the Army, you don't discuss politics in the mess. Is it a surprise that we are in a political army unlike Pakistanis? And third point is, culture is very hard to change. Please persist. Culture is the last thing that will change. First you have to change the SOP, the procedure, the tradition, the symbolism, the rewards, the punishment, all the change back. So let me end with a story that will tell you Army's culture. Okay. This is from Kargil. And one of the Rajput battalions was attacking a certain point, a very high point, more than 5,000 meters. And the only way to climb that hill without getting shot was to climb on a cliff. And there was ice on the cliff. It took them two days to fix the, you know, the aides and the ropes to climb. But finally they climbed and the two Pakistanis were surprised. They killed everybody. One of the people they killed was Captain Temur Malik of Pakistan Army. He was a commando, but he was on loan to the frontier force. And then these soldiers did what the Indian Army does. They, with great effort, they dug graves. They wrapped up these bodies nicely and with full military honors, they buried them. Remember, this is Kargil. You've just reached the top of the hill. It's a place where you lose breath after walking a few steps and you're making all this effort of picking and, you know, doing all this. Captain Temur Malik's grandfather had been a judge in Pakistan and he was in England. He went to the Indian Embassy and he said, my people in the house are distraught. They're crying. Is it possible to somehow find my grandson's body and send it back to Pakistan? So from Embassy, it came to the Government of India. The Government of India spoke to the Army Chief and said, it's not an order, but I don't know. Can it be done? So the Army Chief, Jail Malik, called up the CO. His name was Konsam Himalaya Singh. Later, retired as a left-wing general and said, it's an unusual request. Can you do this? Are you what Kair Singh said? He said, sir, we'll do it. But I have condition. In the Indian Army's culture, we do not protect officers more than we protect Javans. We do not in battlefield treat officers more safely than Javans. So therefore, I want permission to dig up all bodies and we will send all bodies, including all the Pakistani Javans bodies to Pakistan. And you know what? That is exactly what was done. Using MI-17 helicopters, all the bodies were transported back. That is how deep the culture runs. So that's what it is. Let me end by saying to those of your team members who wonder, great, okay, I like it, but why should I really invest so much emotion into teamwork? Tell them this. Winning in life is much harder when you put additional stress of foolishly competing with each other. It is like running the race of life and keeping a body of cement on your head. Why should you be competing with your friends, compete with the enemy, compete with the competition? Isn't it harder? When you're worried about your colleagues, you're always looking at the colleague. Don't know what they're doing. I don't know what they're saying. Secondly, all bosses want the company to succeed, the department to succeed. They don't care if you start competing with a colleague. If the CEO is succeeding alone and not coordinating, believe me, they will never respect. Nor will anybody else. And finally, please remember, success in life doesn't come from a quota system. It's not that if you get four numbers or your boss benefits someone else, then it's coming from your hands. It's not coming out of the same body. He can succeed and you can equally succeed. Two people, two boys from my school, Punjabi medium school joined the army. Surinder Singh chikara and myself. Both of us retired as generals. What the hell? We didn't want to compete with each other. That is all I have to tell you today. Thank you for listening patiently. Should there be any questions I'd be happy to answer. Otherwise, I've already taken a lot of time. It's all yours. Thank you for explaining so illustratively. And I think if youngsters are watching, they will be quite motivated to take as the armed forces as one of the careers. And especially you're told that it's not an essential from which background will come zeal, the spirit, the movement to move forward. This is why Manoj Kamra, he says, please suggest whether the work culture applicable in India scenario is the other countries. I saw the question. Manoj Kamra has asked this question. If the question is whether the work culture applicable in India scenario compared to Japan, USA cited except defense sector. No, of course work culture is different everywhere. Like I said, every organization has different work culture. I've had the occasion of having done an exercise with the US Army. They of course have a slightly different work culture. There's no doubt about it. In some things, they are far more serious than we are. In some things, they're far more law-abiding than they are. You know, in the US Army, if you find driving after having had a drink, that's the end of your career. So I really can't give you a larger answer, but culture really depends on the leadership of that particular place. And so it is very specific. So the last question we will be taking, like you have taken the wide spectrum of this topic of secret of building and retaining teams. What is the, if we say that, what is the main success mantra or the key mantra, which according to you runs, as I say in law, we say that a common thread running between them. What is that common thread which you find that the leadership should have normally to the effect that it brings best of the team? The common thread is be a dad. Be a father to your team, irrespective of your age. Okay. Too many people stand on the stage and say, we are like family. But do you treat your team like a family? Really? There was a time when people used to ask me, why do people working under you always get great reports? Some of them probably may or may not deserve it. And I say, no, no, they all deserve it. Could you give a bad report to your son? When it comes to your son competing against somebody else in the college, will you say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Be a dad to your team, protect them, make them feel good about themselves. It is not transactional. Drama party will not do, talk will not do. Nobody's fooled. Everybody understands you really mean it from, I would go as far to say, they must understand that you actually love them. That is the common thread. Be a dad. Fine. Well, Hamad and well taken. Thank you so for sharing your knowledge. And as they normally say, that team would always mean together everyone achieves more. And I think the way you have illustrated that, there wouldn't be a better way to illustrate that. And there are many takeaways from this session. People will actually cherish it. And I am seeing on the YouTube that people are actually going to talk about the session. Thank you, everyone. Stay safe. Stay blessed. And on Saturday, you'll be having a session with a former judge from Delhi High Court, Justin Monsing. On the overview of prevention of money laundering act as amended to date, please join with us at Saturday. Thank you. Thank you.