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A couple of months back I had this distinctive opportunity to engage with Indian Navy’s oldest fighter squadron, INAS 300 ‘The White Tigers’. Commissioned on July 7, 1960, the unit was celebrating its 66th anniversary in July 2026 and yours truly was invited to deliver the keynote to the Navy pilots, an assignment truly beyond my pay grade.
The squadron, with the distinction of playing a leading role in the Goa Liberation (1961), Indo-Pak War (1965), and Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), have operated onboard India’s aircraft carriers -INS Vikrant, INS Viraat, and INS Vikramaditya. Also dubbed as the ‘longest-serving carrier-borne fighter unit operating East of Suez’, ‘The White Tigers’ had in its service jets ranging from Hawker Sea Hawk and BAe Sea Harrier to MiG-29K/KUB, and boasts of nine gallantry awards, including one Maha Vir Chakra and five Vir Chakras.
My interaction was with the ‘Top Guns’ of Indian Navy, the men and women who must land a fighter jet at full throttle in under 500 feet on a wildly moving deck, day and night. After having watched Tom Cruise ‘Maverick’ in Top Gun (1986) and then in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), I was expecting a gang of go-getters, daredevils, who might not exactly have an ear for a civilian lecturer. But within the first few minutes I realised how mistaken I was.
I could distil the contrast between the reel and the real, or perhaps the West and the East, or more accurately the US Navy and Indian Navy. What I encountered were fighter pilots, all between 22 and 46 years of age, as curious, courageous and courteous. For starters, you can get the entire fighting unit of Indian Navy into one small room, and yet we are feared well beyond the limits of the Indian Ocean. Here are my takeaways of the three days that I spend amid them at India’s largest naval base, INS Hansa, in Goa.
Discipline liberates creativity.
One of the most widely held myths on creativity is that discipline, or rules of any kind, strangles creativity. But if anything, the creative class knows all too well the power of discipline, both self-imposed and externally induced. Without discipline any attempt at creation is quite akin to chaos, it’s after all the frame that offers meaning to the portrait.
In the corporate realm when employees lament that we must follow so many rules that we hardly have elbow room to express our ideas, I can’t but draw their attention to armed forces. They must be creative without inviting insubordination or spiralling out into chaos. How they maintain the delicate balance between liberty and conformity? How to they tap into the upside of discipline without introducing the adversities in their creative pursuits? The key word here is checklist.
All professional fighting units across the world follow checklists, and the pilots top the list. Their checklists, which might often run into tens of items, is what helps develop a muscle memory and channelizes their scant attention onto the more demanding and more uncertain realms. By standardizing, routinizing, and memorizing the basics, the team is more prepared to handle the exceptions. Remember, creativity is not warranted everywhere. Almost ninety percent of any operation is routinized and non-creative, and just about the remaining sliver is subjected to creativity. Ergo, you discipline the rest and relax the little room where a managed chaos reigns. Through rigorous training, hundreds of flying hours, under difficult and varied situations, is where the boundary of the routine meets the realms where creativity takes over. Alas, in the corporate world routines reek of distaste and creativity, resultingly, remains elusive. Let’s see what the corporates learn from military.
Learn widely. Apply selectively.
After having undergone courses at the prestigious National Defence Academy (NDA) and subsequently at their respective functional training centers, all pilots are steeped into their craft, furthering their skills daily. And yet I couldn’t see any complacency. Their eagerness to learn could well be a mix of chivalry and curiosity, but the lack of cockiness was unmistakable. With the nature of warfare transforming right under our feet and the geopolitical structure undergoing rapid changes, the armed forces can’t be caught flat-footed. They must pick weak signals before they become bugle calls.
My talk on critical thinking, creativity and decision making fell on fresh ears and I could see them absorbing most of it, as reflected by their questions. It was a far cry from most corporates where managers often assume that they have achieved a cruising altitude and that now an autopilot could take over. A call for action in the business world is often dismissed citing that the stakes are too high to bring about any real change, and the irony can’t escape me how horribly wrong have they got the arithmetic. What’s an exception for most corporates is a norm in the military arena and yet there are the wide-eyed students before me willing to soak it all for a tough day. Their belief seems to be: Let’s learn it all, for no one knows what would come in handy.
As for the application, if it doesn’t become standardized, almost to the level of a second nature, it doesn’t stand a chance. Such fighting units work on precision at scale, where an iota of variance can quickly choke the cognitive system. So, while they learn it all, they are prudent on what to apply when. Deliberately they defer their judgment on goodness of knowledge. Another lesson for the corporate learning machinery.
Pride in work. But humility in action.
Right from the insignias and slogans to merchandise and codes, the armed forces are replete with their own lingo. If only they could be allowed to tattoo, they would bleed the tricolour. That’s the nature of pride in one’s work but coupled with intellectual humility. Every fighter, on and off the field, knows in his bones that it’s not a solitary battle. It’s a team effort, rather, where most of the resources are beneath the visible iceberg. Countless engineers, technicians, and janitors offer wings to the pilot, and they feel safe only for such invisible efforts.
The personal excellence is only matched by relentless coordination and communication as a team. Of the three forces—army, navy, and air force—it’s often deemed that the fighter pilots are the most individualistic, after all you are all by yourself in the cockpit. But that solitude could be deceptive. All of their daredevilish stunts must be scrutinized threadbare in each of the After Action Reviews (AARs), every move analysed and perfected, and if one is in a defensive posture, that’s a premature plateauing.
In the corporate milieu, the feedback is neither that frequent nor that blunt. If at all, feedback is often pushed and not solicited, and that’s where corrections get deferred and perfection becomes a mirage. I have often witnessed that both personal pride and collective humility are missing in most industries, for the ulterior purpose remains elusive.
A good antidote for the banality of the commercial affairs could be to bring in a lot more professional pride and the gratitude that there’s far more knowable than what meets the eye. My experience with The White Tigers at INAS 300, whose motto is, ‘Anytime. Anywhere’, was of pride in my country and of responsibility in my teaching. Let me assure you that we are in some very able hands. And now, it’s over to you.
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