In war, as in business, the victor is the one who uses superior strategy against their competition. There are three principles to military strategy you can apply to your life and work every single day.
The first idea is called the Principle of Manoeuvre.
You should be clear about your goal, but be flexible about the process of achieving it. Flexibility is the most important single quality that you will require for success in times of rapid change. And in case you hadn’t noticed, we are in times of EXTREMELY rapid change.
Be Open to Continuous Feedback. A key quality for you is to “accept feedback and self-correct”. Peak performers are those who can take information from their environment and even if the information is contrary to all of their planning, they accept the information, modify their plans, and continue moving forward. They are always open to new ideas and insights.
The second military principle you can use is the Principle of Intelligence.
Learn what you need to know. This principle of intelligence means simply, “Get the facts!”. If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it.
The most important thing in business decision making is for you to get accurate information. Facts don’t lie. It’s important that you get the real facts, not the assumed facts, the real PROVABLE facts.
Make better decisions. The quality of the decisions that you make will be in direct proportion to the amount of time that you take to gather timely and accurate information. The very best thing that you can do, if you have insufficient information, is to delay making a decision until you have more info.
The third military principle applied to strategic planning is the Principle of Economy of Force.
Invest your resources wisely. Economy of force means that you expend only the resources necessary to achieve the objective and not more. It also means that you commit sufficient resources to achieve the objective once you have decided upon it.
Since your own personal energy is all you really have to invest over the course of your lifetime, the military principle of economy says that you should be very selfish when deciding how you are going to use yourself.
Keep asking yourself, “How important is this?” and more important,
“How important is this to me?”