Winning Like the Most Successful Car Racing Team - A Lesson on Strategic Planning Process

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Whilst flipping by way of my father's old sports magazines, I came across this famous story:

In the 1970s there was a automobile racing team that won one race following a further. The team consisted of Finnish driver Timo Mäkinen and his British pilot Henry Liddon. They raced together for more than twenty years and their international rally wins had been:

• 1964 Tulip Rally (Mini Cooper S)
  
• 1965 Monte Carlo Rally (Mini Cooper S)
  
• 1965 1000 Lakes (Mini Cooper S)
  
• 1966 1000 Lakes (Mini Cooper S)
  
• 1966 Three Cities Rally (Mini Cooper S)
  
• 1967 1000 Lakes (Mini Cooper S)
  
• 1972 Hong Kong Rally (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1973 Arctic Rally (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1973 1000 Lakes (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1973 RAC Rally (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1974 RAC Rally (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1974 Ivory Coast Rally (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1975 RAC Rally (Ford Escort RS)
  
• 1976 Ivory Coast Rally (Peugeot 504 V6)

They had been an unbeatable team but it was not plain luck there was a important to it. This is their story:

Two weeks before just about every motor race, Henry Liddon, becoming a navigator or pilot as some call it, arrived at the rally location. He borrowed a vehicle and went by means of the whole track various times to familiarize himself with it and learn where the important places would be, like the service bay. Following numerous days when he knew the strategy almost by heart, Mäkinen would arrive and they would practice together, making use of Liddon's notes. They went by way of the whole track quite a few times and the result was inevitable.

They won.

For the duration of the race, the navigator wants to have quick solutions to questions, and the answers come from preparation, intuition and experience.

The small business environment is a carbon copy of this. You require speed, quick reflexes, sharp abilities, and you need to have to be able to appear far into the future. When you prepare and write a detailed enterprise plan, you develop into hardwired for success. Writing a small business strategy makes you alot more creative, able to see the huge picture-the purpose of your entrepreneur idea-and lets you see what is required in order to succeed.

We all adore to win. And there can only be one winner. What creates the winner is:

- passion and drive, as well as awareness of purpose (that is the driver)

- a detailed strategy of action, a business strategy (that is the brain of the race)

Without these qualities you can nonetheless drive, but without having a program you could possibly finish up going nowhere. It is the strategic planning method that takes you further. Having a strategy enables you to develop into a winner.