What the Navy Seals can Teach Us about Executing a Plan
May 06, 2011The biggest news story all over the world right now is the U.S. Navy Seals Team Six’s mission into Osama bin Laden’s home. This event has created an incredible amount of emotion across the globe and as of this writing, a controversy over publishing photos. While I won’t go into a political discussion here or a religious one either, there are things that we can all take from this event and apply to our own lives.
For this mission to be considered a success, a lot of things needed to happen beforehand. Your financial life is a lot like that. I’ll consider it a given that all of us want to reach a state of financial freedom and have the ability to retire one day, or if not fully retire at least reconfigure what our days look like and our time commitments. When talking to people who are nearing retirement, a major theme of what they are looking for in retirement is to have freedom to commit as little or as much of their schedules as they see fit. They want calendar control. How does controlling your own schedule through reaching a financially independent stage have anything at all to do with bin Laden?
You won’t wake up one day, having had no plan and no direction in the decades prior to that day, and instantly be able to retire. It takes planning. On several levels. And not only planning, but execution of those plans. For the Navy Seals, they had a high level plan (Get Osama bin Laden), a tactical plan (helicopters vs. Humvees, time of day, who does what, etc.), a Plan B (what if a helicopter crashes?), and a number of rehearsals (learning to implement the long term and tactical plans) before finally carrying out their mission to completion.
What’s your long range plan?
Do you want to maintain today’s standard of living? Do you want to travel the world and stay in 5 star hotels? Do you want to just put your feet up and relax? What’s your vision? How do you see retirement unfolding? How do you define success?
What’s your tactical plan? Do you have a Plan B?
Are you using any type of budgeting program? (Mint.Com is a great tool.) Are you contributing to your 401(k) plan? Are you spending less than you earn? Do you have an emergency fund in place or are you saving toward that goal? What happens if your company downsizes and you no longer are employed or you have a parent who suddenly needs full time care? What happens if you buy the winning Mega-Millions lottery ticket or inherit a substantial amount of money?
Are you prepared to execute your plan?
For the things in your tactical plan, are you doing them on a regular and consistent basis? Are they ingrained habits or things you do sporadically? How flexible is your plan, can it deal with life’s inevitable setbacks? Do you measure success and track your progress?
No matter what your goal, your mission or your objective, having the ability to see your long term vision is critical. From there, finding tactics or strategies that will take you closer to your goals (I’ve seen credit card debt take people in precisely the wrong direction) is the next most important piece. Making those tactics part of your everyday life, to the point where they become habits, is the fuel that takes you from vision to completing your mission successfully. It worked for the Navy Seals and it WILL work for you too.