Your Strategy Is Always Developing

1. You Can’t Do It Alone. In my opinion, one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your working life is to try and do everything alone. In WoW, you realise very early on there are things that you literally cannot do without the help of the right people. Hogger alone will kick your butt early on – as will tasks early on in your career if you choose your own glory over rationally working as a team.

Key Lesson: You will get further in your career working with a team than trying to do impossible things alone.

2. Preparation

It amazes me if I think back to groups and raids in WoW. We would spend months preparing by getting the right gear, the right team members and the right strategy. Then, spend hours pre-briefing on a dungeon before going in.

Now think about your career — how often do you go into meetings, sales or projects with less than 10 minutes planning? If you walked straight into a dungeon or situation you had never experienced before in WoW and got everyone killed – how would you expect the team to respect and trust your leadership skills?

You aren’t going to die if you don’t strategise properly for a meeting, but just imagine how much more valued, trusted and effective you would be if people could see the foresight you have in a carefully planned strategy.

Key Lesson: Treat every meeting, sale and project like a new raid – carefully strategise what you know about the possible terrain, people you will encounter, and who will be there with you. Communicate this to your team.

3. Carefully Select Your Team

Let’s talk about the basics of a team in WoW, and how it relates to real life. I strongly believe there is a huge parallel between the two, so let me talk this through.

3.1 – Core traits.In WoW, each race starts with fundamental abilities that others cannot learn no matter how they try. In the real world, you will come across people who are fundamentally more credible, show more energy or are better at listening than others.

Carefully think about who you have on your team to begin with, and how those people can be best utilised in your sales and projects – particularly how they mesh with other internal and external parties.

Key Lesson: Recognise people’s fundamental strengths and weaknesses and use them.

3.2 – Situational Class Traits and Roles

Now, there are then key roles that people will play in specific situations. The trick is to make sure the person is suitable for the role, and that they are know they are that role. The essence of ‘Situational Leadership’ is all about how you lead, choose and develop people dynamically depending on the situation.

Let’s discuss a few of them:

3.2.1 – Raid Leader

In the case of a real life sales strategy, business strategy or project – there must be a raid leader. This person could be the ‘tank’, ‘healer’ or any other role in the execution, but this person’s overall role is to provide strategy and guidance for other’s to work within. This person must recognise that they hold ultimate responsibility for everything that happens. If you have the wrong team, the wrong strategy or wrong execution (within your control) – you must see it as your responsibility.