14. The Law of Preparation

Under the Laws of Success

Effective performance is preceded by painstaking preparation.

The mark of the serious person, or the real professional, in any field is that he takes far more time to prepare than the average. The nonserious person, or the nonprofessional, always attempts to bluff or to "wing it." He tries to get by with a minimum of preparation. He doesn’t realize that his level of preparation is immediately evident to everyone around him.

A quote from Abraham Lincoln shaped my life and my attitude as I was growing up. He said, as a young man in Springfield, Illinois, "I shall study and prepare myself and some day my chance will come." He recognized, as do all great men and women, that painstaking preparation was the key to his future.

The first corollary of the Law of Preparation is
Do your homework; it is the details that trip you up every single time.

Great successes are often determined by attention to the smallest details. One fact, one inaccuracy, can make all the difference. And everything counts.

My friend Joel Weldon gave a wonderful talk a few years ago to the National Speakers Association, entitled "Elephants Don’t Bite." The central message of his talk was that it was the "mosquitoes" of life, the small things that you tend to ignore, that cause you the most trouble. No one ever gets bitten by an elephant, but people get bitten by mosquitoes all the time. His message was simple: If you want to get to the top of your field, you must be fast-idious about the little things because, as a minister once said, "thedevil is in the details."

The second corollary of the Law of Preparation comes from business guru Peter Drucker, who wrote,
"Action without thinking is the cause of every failure."

Taking action before thinking through the details and their possible consequences seems to be the underlying cause of most failure in life. The reverse of this statement, of course, is that action preceded by accurate thinking and thorough planning is the reason for virtually every success.

This doesn’t mean that you will automatically be successful if you plan thoroughly in advance. But it does mean that you will almost always fail if you don’t. Murphy’s various laws of organization can be summarized in the following statement: "Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. And of all the possible things that can go wrong, the worst possible thing will go wrong at the worst possible time and cost the greatest amount of money."

The first comment on Murphy’s Law is that "Murphy was an optimist." Never assume or take anything important for granted. If it is important enough to matter, it is important enough to
check and double-check.

How you can apply this law immediately:

1. Think through your most important tasks and responsibilities. Think on paper. Write down every detail of the matter and review your notes carefully.

2. Seek out the inputs and opinions of others before you make a major decision or commitment. Who else has dealt with a similar situation? What insights can he or she give you?

Get the facts. Get the real facts, not the obvious facts, the apparent facts, the assumed facts, or the logical facts. Facts don’t lie. Check and double-check. Your thinking and your decisions are only as good as the quality of the information you have to work with.

Source: Brian Tracy, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, (San Francisco, 2000).