Our Goal Is To Win

Our goal is to win--to win games, business competitions, markets, or personal goals. Winning is defining the future that will satisfy us and then making it happen. It is creating the future you want. You win by thinking and acting strategically.

Strategy is all about minimizing risk while maximizing reward; or put another way; it is about making sure that the odds are as much as possible in our favor. It is about achieving long-term success--not about winning a single battle or a single competition.

Long-term success means that you have succeeded in taking advantage of opportunity after opportunity and that you have apportioned our resources correctly to ensure success after success. Winning one battle and collapsing thereafter is to no avail unless the single battle ensures permanent success--which it almost never does.

You sometimes think that strategy is a luxury, something to be done once every few years in order to have a “strategic plan.” To the contrary, it is a daily requirement and probably the most important function of a leadership team, for it is strategy that allows tactical efforts to have payoff and to be worthwhile.

Great strategy can succeed in the absence of great tactics, but great tactics in the absence of even mediocre strategy are unlikely to lead to victory. Strategy, then, is the number one responsibility of all managers--if managers fail to take their strategy responsibilities seriously, they are doing a huge disservice to those below them.

Strategy, however, is not just of interest to managers, but it is--or should be--of interest to everyone in an organization. To the extent that everyone knows the strategy and takes part in building it, each person is far more likely to make the right small decisions that must be made almost constantly.

The Prometheus Process, a unique approach to creating and executing strategy, has worked well in a variety of business, national security, war, political, and government environments. It has the highest value when used to create an organization as in a business start-up situation or to plan something like a war or political campaign from the very beginning.

In the event that an organization or campaign did not start with a well-conceived strategy, however, the Prometheus Process is applicable from any point to ensure the best possible outcome given the prevailing circumstances.

Thus, the Process is excellent for contingency planning, crisis management (where the tendency is grasp short term tactical solutions without understanding their long-term strategic impact), forward look assessments, transformation efforts, and campaign planning (product introduction, brand development, and military operations ranging from war to humanitarian).

What is not acceptable is failure to think, plan, and act strategically regardless of position or circumstances.