In both business and war, victors are often the side with clearer goals. Reading a Brian Tracy’s article, being mindful about three military principles may help us to be a better manager:
1. Principle of Maneuver
This principle says that you should be clear about your goal and be flexible on how to achieve it.
Key to being flexible is to “accept feedback and self-corrective” advise. Good managers can take any feedback even if it is contrary to what they have in mind. They can accept new information, modify their current plans, and move forward quickly with new ideas and insights.
2. Principle of Intelligence
This simply means, “get the facts” which are not manipulated. There is probably no question about the important of real facts and not any assumed facts which may be full of hopes but not reasons.
The quality of the decisions that you make may be in proportion to real, current information that you have. With enough information, you should not delay to make a decision and move forward with action.
3. Principle of Economy
This means that you need to have and be ready with enough resources to achieve your objective and and not more.
You are limited by your personal energy and you need to be selfish on how you are going to spend your time. Regularly ask yourself the following:
- How important is this task?
- How important is this goal to me?
Think, Learn and Do
Here are two ideas that you can put to use:
- First, be flexible, be willing to try different things and be open to new ideas.
- Second, get real facts and try to understand some facts before jumping into action with ‘long tail’ consequences.
