Take Command: Lessons in Leadership: How to Be a First Responder in Business by Jake Wood

Author:Jake Wood [Wood, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780804138390
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-13T14:00:00+00:00

PRIORITIZE YOUR TARGETS

In football, a blitzer coming through the center of the line always becomes the priority block, because he has the shortest path to the quarterback. In disaster medicine, patients are triaged by priority: critical, urgent, priority, low priority, and expectant. Critical patients can die within the hour if untreated; expectant patients will die within the hour, regardless of care. Expectant patients—although the most severely wounded—are not treated. It is a tough decision to make; however, any time and resources expended, beyond those which quickly reduce their pain and suffering, are time and resources taken away from patients that have a chance of survival.

The system for prioritizing targets I reference most often, however, comes from my military training as a sniper. Snipers often insert themselves behind enemy lines in advance of a major battle, in a concealed position that offers a broad perspective of the battlefield so they can observe and report timely and critical information to commanders, as well as take precision shots at selected targets. Marine snipers have a very specific target priority list ingrained in them throughout training; and as important as memorizing the list is knowing why the list is ordered that way, and what effect it will have on the battlefield. At the top are enemy snipers, since they are often the most effective and demoralizing enemy soldiers on the battlefield. Next are enemy officers, since they direct the battle and issue orders. Then come radio operators (to cut lines of communication and create confusion) and machine gunners (to prevent death in large numbers from their rapid rates of fire). Last (with a few more in between) are common riflemen. The single caveat to all this is the “danger-close target,” or plainly, any enemy, regardless of rank or function, who presents himself in front of you within fifty yards and therefore takes priority over all other targets. At that range any enemy, regardless of skill, is a mortal danger.

How to translate this lesson to the business world—and life in general—is obvious. In any given high-stakes situation, a large variety of problems—and opportunities—are going to present themselves. But they will not all be equal in importance—far from it. Effective leaders understand this, and hold their fire on the low-priority targets so they can focus on hitting the high-priority ones. These leaders understand that every expenditure—whether capital invested, hours logged, or employee hired—must have maximal impact. The ability to channel these resources to the most critical threats—and the highest potential opportunities—is a skill that’s often overlooked, but can be cultivated with awareness, practice, and consistent execution.

As I’ve stated, on the battlefield the top-priority target is enemy snipers—they’re hidden, and with a single shot can demoralize or destroy a unit. Similarly, in business, the highest-priority targets are the threats facing your company that you know are out there, but that you cannot readily see. Is your competitor pouring money into research and development? You had better be prepared for a new product launch that is going to potentially shatter your market share.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.