PART A: Winning the War within-
80% implementation and action and 20% learning in life, no masquerading. You are responsible for yourself and for others. Implementation is the best way to learn to get things done in life. There are quotes from books such as Robert Greene’s 33 strategies of War.
On any team, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them and develop a plan to win. It starts with you and the goal is to become as efficient and effective as possible so you must learn to lead yourself first.
Leader must set aside ego, accept responsibility for failures, attack weaknesses and consistently work to build a better and more effective team. A leader does not take credit for success but bestows it on others.
Leaders who epitomise extreme ownership push people to achieve higher standards and they do not preach but they do not tolerate nonsense from anyone. If substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable without consequences than the poor performance becomes the standard. Consequences for failing need not be immediately severe, but leaders must ensure that tasks are repeated until the higher expected standard is achieved.
A high level of self-respect, self-confidence and standards will mean you will not tolerate bullshit behaviour from people around you such as friends, staff, organisation associated with. Second class behaviour will not be tolerated. You serve the audience better and it is about them. This does not have to be about business, it is about everything in your life. Make sure the team is raised to those standards. When you operate from a reality where you do not want to be led or raised up.
If substandard performance is expected and maintained then it becomes the norm. Those with lower level of consciousness means you accept bullshit from others. These trickle down to your life. It is about how you live those philosophies and get to the work done. Leaders must push the standards that encourages and enables the team to use extreme ownership.
The performance is undeniable. The mindset must be built into the team. It requires you to step out of your comfort zone, it is called growing pains. People do not follow this. Be willing to push through the uncomfortable positions and go through the discomfort and the pain. See the weaknesses and seek to strengthen them and come up with a plan to overcome challenges. You go first on standards and demonstrate this. Take action of the highest level. You will lose the best players and A-level folk. Raise the standards that you raise things too.
Poor performance becomes the new standard and you suck because of that. Power versus force is the way. It trickles down to you. It is how you live the philosophy and integrate it within you, it is how you maintain discipline. Look for ways to get better and better. See whom you serve and be the best at things in your life. A leader should not be satisfied and must always strive to improve and build that mindset into the team.
This is not about intellectual stimulation but about taking action. This will cause you to grow, this is the terror barrier. The paradigms that are transformed and what will happen when you step out of your comfort zone will be the situation that life must be in. You must face facts and identify how to overcome challenges as you want it to be done.
There must be true belief and faith in the greater cause, you must overcome things to win. You must look at the same level of output and work to overcome the risks that will take you to the greatest level. If you ask your team to be organised and act in what you do.
People look at you subconsciously for support and transformation of the person will only happen not with words or debates but with by living the philosophy that you should be doing. Do it yourself first and be it yourself first. You will see mediocre results otherwise.
Align the thoughts to the vision. Actions and words reflect belief with a clear confidence and self-assuredness that is not possible when belief is in doubt. You may make mistakes but that is okay because you will grow out of this.
Check the Ego
Ego makes people want to be the best, when it clouds your judgement though it is a problem. Operate with a high degree of humility, admit mistakes, take ownership and develop a plan to overcome challenges in the future. This prevents a realistic assessment of the person and the team, just see how much your ego can be kept it check. Your ability to manage that and your actions will help you conduct business. The ego is a weak link for the entire team and the entire business deal. As far as business deal is concerned, see how they treat others around you and how things are. See how they treat waiters, see how responsive or irresponsive people are with random folk. Build a team of stars by observing behaviours off people. It will help you find out what people really are, when people do a google search on you, research you then they will see what people are really like. How you do one thing is how you do all things in life.
What weighs you down is the past, memories and defeats. Wage war to the past and bring yourself in the present. Sometimes force yourself to be in the present. Wage war on the mind and control it so it is fluid and mobile.
Amid turmoil of event, don’t lose presence of mind, the counterbalance strategy. Maintain your mental powers and stay confident and decisive, make the mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. There should be action in your life. Let us learn from chaos of life.
Create a sense of urgency and desperation, the death ground strategy. Only way to change is through action and there is too much at stake. Enter unknown territory where you must work like hell to win.
PART 2:
LAWS OF COMBAT:
Cover and Move: mutually support one another, break silence and depend on others and understand who depends on them. The idea behind this is everyone should be on the same page. Each person has their own visions and their own dreams, if you get lax on this then people will move in their own directions. Let people go if they do not like you or don’t want to work with you. If the team fails then everyone fails.
Pointing fingers and you blame others is not of much use, there is no reason to talk crap behind someones back, If people do not work in sync then take responsibility for things. It is a systems problem and not a person problem. If there are issues then create a resolution mechanism to address this and get ahead so that people can work effectively and reach results that are outlined. Maintain simplicity while also covering complexities in your life. Make sure plans and communication in a simple way while understanding there is complexity in life.
This will transform business and relationships with people. Do not make this complex. When there are many layers of sales, marketing, technology, Human Resources and dealing with people you scale accordingly. Simplify complexity and hold the complex stuff in your mind. Not everyone is evolved upto that level of understanding in their life. See if people are able to perform to the highest level or keep it simple.
This rule is crucial to the success of any team in any combat, business or life.
Prioritise and Execute:
On the battlefield there are numerous problems which compound, so you relax, look around and execute on your problems. You elevate yourself and get over to make educated decision. Evaluate the highest priority problem, lay out in simple, clean and concise terms the highest priority effort for our team, develop and determine a solution and seek input from key leaders and from team when possible, get to directing execution of that solution and focus all efforts and resources toward this priority task, move on to the next high priority problem, repeat, repeat when priorities shift within the team, pass the situational awareness both up and down the chain, pivot and execute what is needed.
People cannot manage more than six to ten folk so make sure there are a few core operators that are segmented further, decentralise. Put hierarchy in place which is fine even though there must be decisions to be made. Responsibilities must trickle from top down so that things do not fall apart. Junior leaders must understand their limits of responsibility and fully understand what is within their limit and what is not. No one operates on their own command in decentralised command.
Lose Battles but Win the War, Grand strategy.
Everyone is angling for power, you want to calculate ahead and plot to reach your long term goals. Do not react to people or things, let others get caught up in twists or turns, you let that happen but do not lose focus on the last laugh.
Overwhelm resistance with speed and suddenness, the blitzkrieg strategy.
In an indecisive world, many people are overly cautious and the use of speed will bring you untold power. Strike first, before your opponents have time to think or prepare, this will make them emotional, unbalanced and prone to error. When you follow with another swift and sudden manoeuvre, you will induce further panic and confusion. This works best with a setup, a lull-your unexpected action catches your enemy off guard. When you strike, hit with unrelenting force. Acting with speed and decisiveness will get you respect, awe and irresistible momentum.
Negotiate while advancing, the diplomatic-war strategy.
People will always try to take from you in negotiation what they could not get from you in battle or direct confrontation. They will appeal to morality and fairness as a cover to advance their position. Before and during negotiations, you must keep advancing and create relentless pressures to settle on your terms, create your reputation to be be tough and uncompromising. People will appeal to morality and cover, put yourself in a strong position and put relentless pressure. The more you take the more you can give back in meaningless concessions.
PART 3:
Sustaining Victory:
36 minute
Plan:
Make sure you have a mission analysis. Have clear directives for the team. A broad and ambiguous mission results in the greatest mission. Make it explicitly clear and achieve the greater vision. Different options should be determined and resources used to make sure the best outcome is reached. We generally don’t recognise out own assets and others assets. The goal is to move towards the grand strategy.
The document of intangible and intangible assets you can have are:
Time, money, experience, ideas, distribution, distribution, current customers, see how the pieces of puzzle can be used to leverage and reach a goal.
You can expand your paradigm to understand all the assets available, lean on expertise of those the best to accomplish the goal. Once this course of action is determined, go ahead and plan in detail and develop a thorough plan. This requires detailed information gathering, critical thinking and ability to utilise.
A leaders checklist should include the following:
- Analyse the mission
- Identify personnel, assets, resources, and time available
- Decentralise the planning process
- Determine a specific action plan
- Empower others to develop the plan for the selected course of action
- Plan for likely contingencies through each phase of the operation
- Mitigate the risks that can be controlled as much as possible
- Delegate portions of plan and brief junior leaders
- Be tactical genius and stand back
- Continuously check and question the plan against emerging information to ensure it still fits the situation
- Brief the plan to all participants and supporting assets
- Conduct post-operational debrief after execution
Ask questions and engage in discussion and interaction with the team.
Analyse lessons learned for next time. This is where the result is going to be. Do this perfectly and execute. It is not about overstimulating with books, seminars etc.
Leading down the chain of command: You must be immersed and should know the big picture, it does not translate to others and subordinates. Look at others and figure out a way to communicate in a simple, concise and right manner.
If your boss isn’t making a decision then you should take responsibility and support. Make sure critical decisions are made. Leading up the chain takes influence, knowledge, communication, high professionalism and copywriting skills. Study courtiership – political influence. Have the humility though to get things in a grand strategy which you may not be aware or interested in. You don’t know if this is the right action or plan. Recognise there is a bigger picture and accept that with humility.
This does not get captured in books, movies or shows it is glamorised and not the truth, the arena is the only place to learn and grow. Leaders must be prepared to make an educated guess on previous experiments, knowledge available in the moment and take fast calls.
Business does not face life and death situations but there is immense pressure and outcomes are not certain so you must be comfortable with chaos and you must act decisively. You will not be 100% right in most times. Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.
Discipline is freedom:
You must walk a fine line and be in equilibrium, there must be the ability to hold two polarising thoughts which you must embrace and transcend. Do not be obsessed with details. Be a leader and follower. Calm but not robotic. Logical but not devoid of emotion. Own fully and decentralise command. Not cocky but confident
PICK YOUR Battles Carefully:
Know your limits, time lost. Undermine people covertly and aim at weaknesses. Fighting with economy means you outlast your foe.
TRANSFORM YOUR WAR INTO A CRUSADE- MORALE STRATEGY:
The secret of motivating people Is to think more of the group and less of themselves. Make sure they should look at the army and have a common enemy. Let soldiers see you and you have to go first. That will make people want to please you and they will work wonders.
SEGMENT YOUR FORCES, THE CONTROLLED CHAOS STRATEGY:
War has speed and adaptability- interpretation and decision making is hard today as there is too much info. Speed and adaptability come from flexible organisation. Make forces elusive and make them into independent groups. Make people reach a goal and let them run.