Create a Winning Strategy

I'm watching Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France these days. Clearly it's hard work and requires a huge amount of physical and emotional preparation along with sheer willpower to muscle through such and event. It also requires sound strategies well thought out ahead of time and quick thinking in the field to adapt to unforeseeable conditions.

While I can't begin to guess at most of the strategies Lance uses in the Tour, it's obvious that he uses some basic thinking as his foundation and then adapts as needed as conditions warrant. Pacing himself is part of it. So is staying out of trouble. He works at being "good enough" a lot of the time and saves his energy for where he really shines... and then pours everything he's got into it.

It strikes me there's plenty to learn from those strategies and apply to other situations, including business. What preparations have you made to deal with what's foreseeable - what are your strategies? How do you adapt them when conditions aren't "normal"?

What did you do today to ensure you'll still be "in the race" tomorrow?