Okay business people, I am going to step away from the normal focus on work and talk a little bit about my previous experience as a college football athlete and the way I was introduced to strategic formulation.
When I played high school football, my team had a lackluster win-loss record, but I still have dreams about how we could have been a lot better had our coaches implemented more strategic formulation and planning to prepare us for our competition each week. I also think it would have been beneficial if they could have spent more time teaching us how to be more strategic about the mental part of the game, versus just the physical part of the game.
With the risk of bragging, I’ll say that I was one of our top players on our High School team. I played several starting positions in all three phases of the game (offense, defense, and special teams) and it was rare that I was not on the field during any given play of a game. As such, I thought I knew a lot about the game of football, but when I made it to the college ranks, I felt like a first time player in my knowledge and understanding of the game.
Once I was introduced to this higher level of play, it was only a few weeks before I had learned more about the game at the collegiate level than I had learned in 3 years in High School. I was amazed at how much more there was to the game. We watched game films in high school, but we didn’t study the film or break it down like they do in Division 1A. I received a great deal of feedback about my skills and techniques, but more importantly, I was taught how to read the flow of the game, the management of the game, and the mental planning and preparation that was required to be the best we could be each week.
The coaching staff at the collegiate level focused on strategic formulation and developing winning plays. Information gathering and analysis allowed them to find some of the smallest, but yet the very important weaknesses of our competitor each week. This allowed the coaches to strategically formulate to play to our strengths and take advantage of our competitor.
The strategic formulation didn’t stop at game time. Rather, at quarters and halves, we would get into our position groups and discuss what was happening on the field so we could formulate new strategic plans and make adjustments for the remainder of the game.
It was a great experience for me to be a part of the living, breathing, strategically-minded organization. It was inspiring to see how fast a strategic plan could be formulated in a short time frame, and then executed on the field.
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