Tilt the odds in your favor before entering the fray

I've written previously on the utility of fast decision-making. This should not be confused with running into situations as a headless chicken without a plan. It was Sun Tzu who said that "the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won".

Good preperation and contingecy planning is a prerequisite for successful missions. There will be fog of war - you will not have transparency into all information. Repeated success also poses the danger of a team suffering the "disease of victory", getting too cocky, becoming reckless and deprioritizing sound planning. It is every leader's duty to not get caught up in the enthusiasm fight against disease of victory so that complaceny does not creep in. With good planning you are already maximizing your advantage against your counterpart. But just with every positive trait it can tilt negatively if taken to an extreme: Meticulous step-by-step planning will overburden you and your team.

Maximizing opportunity space

It is always better to have more options than few, even if it often makes your decision subjectively harder to make. But the worst decisions arise as a result of forced decisions, i.e. when you let the walls close in too tightly and you are forced into a decision. You must master your circumstances and maneuver yourself into better position every day. In in a corporation this could be building a network of allies which you can leverage to expand the solution space to a problem before that problem even arises. You are tilting the balance into your direction by giving yourself access to more avenues. Positional advantages are accumulated in drops and leveraged in buckets

To stick with the example: Building a network is a multi-year process which happens very slowly. But it eventually pays dividends in buckets. There is a lot of time, effort and skill being invested that is often invisible to an outside observer. You are steadily building your competitive advantage.

Don't unnecessarily burn the ships

The notorious conquistador Hernán Cortès famously burned his ships after landing in South America to forcefully create a point of no return for himself and his mercenaries. Symbolically "burning the ships" is akin to unnecessarily commiting to a certain path when there is no pressure to do so. It goes against the agile mindset: When you are on an unfruitful path, you want to pivot as soon as possible, you don't want to struggle down another path with self-inflicted wounds.

Some common bridge burning I have observed:

• burning bridges with people due to negative emotions like spite. There is never a reason to poke the bear, even if you are provoked (e.g. don't leave scorched earth when leaving your team or company, or reacting petulantly to rejection)
• making unnecessary time commitments. You are setting yourself up to fail when you - without inducement - are committing or even suggesting timelines that you cannot be certain you can hold

Letting a opportunity go awry leads to the same result as having never been in the position in the first place or not having seen it all. I would not underestimate how malleable the world is. If you pursue an objective with enough energy and passion from a beneficial starting position, you will be surprised at how the world often reconfigures itself in your favor.