Prepare To Win

By Mark vonAppen

There is a way of doing things that spoils the ending for us every time.  It's about having a standard of performance that is communicated and understood from the bottom of the organization to the top. 

It's called preparing to win. 

We can't just show up and say, "Hey, I think we're going to win today."

That's not how it works. 

When we are preparing to win, we practice hard and set goals for each training session.  We don't go out and simply go through the motions.  We don't phone it in.  

We set our minds on winning, even on the drill ground.  Practice is where we develop good habits. We must train proactively for any situation.  We have to know how we will react given any circumstance—we can’t guess.  We must practice for every possible scenario so we don’t get surprised.  We train to the point where we can anticipate what is going to happen next.

If we are doing our jobs, we are preparing to win every day.

Photo by author

When we are preparing to win, we perform the basics until muscle memory kicks in, then we add a sense of urgency and turn up the degree of difficulty.  We have to fight fatigue.  When fatigue sets in, we become clumsy and inattentive.  Mastery of the basics means our minds are available to deal with each threat as it presents itself.  That is what reduces injuries.

If we are doing our jobs, we are preparing to win every day.  

When we are preparing to win, we are writing our own ending.  When it's over we can honestly say, "That turned out exactly how we expected it to."

We should never be surprised by the way things turn out.  We are either preparing to win, or we are preparing to lose.  Either way, we know what the result will be.