Aim small, Miss small

Silence. Utter silence punctuated by my breathing, and slightly below that, my heartbeat. I focus, time seems to stand still, I feel I can count to one thousand between heartbeats. A loud report, and around half a second later, an eternity in my current state, I see the target move slightly and the voice over the intercom, connected to the bunker under the targets, tells me “hit”. It was a spring morning, I was 21, and this was my first shot in my brand new Remington 700 Police Sniper, accurized by the best armourers of the Argentinean Army. I was elated, even if my shoulder was quite sore (it kicked like a mule, on steroids and speed), but that started a close relationship that would teach me a lot about ballistics and life. My uncle, an admiral with the Peruvian Navy and an USMC graduate, had told me about the Rifleman’s Creed some months before; at this point, I couldn’t help but remembering his words: “This is my rifle…”.

Yes, shooting is my other hobby besides scuba diving. In a sense, both activities have quite a lot in common: they involve self-mastery; they require a strategy, thorough planning and flawless execution; they require a relentless pursuit of excellence and both are, to a quite big degree, mental activities. Last, but not least, both run in my family.

As such, in this article I am not only trying to share some of the lessons I’ve learnt, but also part of my leadership journey.

What I’ve learnt

Aim small, miss small

This sniper saying, which was popularized by the book and movie "American Sniper", is one of the first lessons for anyone striving for excellence.

Sharpshooters and snipers do not aim at a target; instead, they aim at a detail contained inside the target.  They do not aim at a head, torso or even the centre of the target; rather, they aim at the tip of an ear, at a button in a shirt, or at the small gap between the "1" and the "0" in the centre of a paper target.

By concentrating in such a small feature, you are signalling that you do not accept anything but excellence, and that you will put all your efforts towards attaining it.  You take a non-comformist path, and you don't get sloppy with "good enough" shots at anything you do.

Work with the rhythms, not against them

Nobody can keep a rifle perfectly still. Even minute blood pressure variations, created every time your heart beats, will cause micrometric movements in your hands, while each breath will cause bigger variations (still in the order of a millimetre or so). Sounds small? A millimetre variation at the trigger area will cause over 50 cm of variation at 500m. And 50cm is typically the difference between putting the bullet where you want it and kicking a cloud of dust near your target.

In business and life, there are also rhythms. Sometimes you are at the top of your game, sometimes you aren’t. Sometimes the market is fantastic and everyone is making a mint, and sometimes lean times are the flavour of the day. Acknowledge these rhythms, use them to your advantage or try to work around them, instead of trying to fight them (because you are not winning that one).

Situational awareness

I am surprised how, for a species that evolved as apex predators, we are so capable of suppressing one of our basic, genetically-ingrained skills so extensively: situational awareness.

Did you know that the number of injuries related to the use of a cell phone has more than quadrupled in the last 5 years?

When in the field, or in the shooting range, you need to be aware of what is going on all around you; like a sphere that surrounds you, you need to be cognizant of your complete environment, all the time. People that are “good in the woods” do this instinctively, while most people manage to bury their heads in their cell phone / computer / immediate concerns and then get nasty surprises (like waking up in the hospital after being run over a car – or loosing that juicy deal to a competitor that they never saw coming).

Funnily enough, companies also tend to do the same, and are quite often terrible at being aware of their environment, and detecting threats early. This last one is a nice example of a governance failure at board level.

Focus, focus

Shooting requires absolute focus. Once it’s time to take the shot (or run the course in practical shooting), your universe becomes reduced to you, your immediate environment, your weapon, the flightpath of the bullet and your target(s).

There are some situations that require, for a relatively short period of time, absolute focus. Tough negotiations, complex modelling, hitting your target at over 450 m or your first kiss (I know that this last one is going to be controversial :-) ).

Preparation

To be successful in any discipline, nothing beats preparation. Whether you are running a marathon, scuba diving to 70m of depth or making your business grow, the more you train and prepare, the likelier you are to succeed. And remember Musashi’s maxim for training (so keep your training and your preparation as close to the real thing as possible):

A friend of mine, who is a retired special forces and a police sniper instructor in Poland, keeps telling me that a good position ensures a good shot (Dobra pozycja, dobre strzela?, for those that speak Polish). And he is right, it’s exactly like that, both in the shooting range and in general.

Consistency

In shooting, and much more so in sniping, consistency equals accuracy. It is more important, at least at first, to acquire the ability to place all shots within a small region of the target (even if this is off-centre) than to place some of them in the centre, but with a bigger dispersion.

The reason for this is simple: if you are placing all your shots around, say, the number 6 on your target in a tight group, you are making a systematic error. And systematic errors are easily corrected (in this case, by adjusting your scope or sights to point to the centre of the shot group).

When not holding a weapon in your hands, the same applies. Top performers, in any field, are not those that place the odd, lucky shot in the bullseye. Rather, it is those people that can score consistently day in and day out, and use that as a base for improvement. After all, in shooting and in life, near-misses don’t count, and all judgement is done at that point where bullet-meets-target.

The right tool for the right job

My father gave me my first firearm when I was 8 years old. It was a second-hand (more probably third-hand, or fifteenth-hand) .22 calibre semiautomatic carbine, sporting a 2X scope. In layman’s terms, it was quite rubbish, but to me it was pure gold; my father and I would go through several hundred rounds a month. It was a fantastic learning tool.

My father, he never cared much for rifles. Since he loved hunting quails and ducks, his tool of choice was a twin-barrelled 24-gauge shotgun. When shooting paper, he loved nothing better than his father’s service revolver, an old .38 Special that he inherited from his father. Again, a tool that fitted him perfectly and the circumstances where he used it.

My mother, on the other hand, had no respect for anything that isn’t a long gun. Her tool of choice was an army-surplus Mauser 1909 Argentino.

Using surplus ammunition (that was way out of date) and shooting with the factory iron sights, she went on to take the gold in the 300m category, several years on a row at province level. Quite impressive, particularly for a petite, 50 kg woman. Her secret: in her mind, this old rifle was not a tool; it was more akin to a brush with which she could paint the target in whichever motif she chose.

Over the years, I owned (or was entrusted with) several other firearms: a Taurus PT92 pistol, which allowed me to win a bronze medal in practical shooting; a FN P90, which has a special place in my heart; my accurized Remington 700 PS, with which I started this article; and more recently, a FB Beryl C assault rifle. Very different weapons, for very different purposes.

No matter what the tools of your trade are, they inherent have strengths and weaknesses, and are adapted to a defined range of jobs. But, more importantly (as this is often ignored), there is an inherent good or bad fit between the tool and the user. Be curious, explore different tools, and find the ones that you like the best and fit the situations you are likely to encounter. And once you selected some tools, get to know them intimately. But never, ever, stop checking other tools out!

Don’t close your eyes

Samurai archers were taught not to blink until the arrow strikes home, in the belief that keeping their focus on their target until it’s struck somehow helps the arrow to fly true.

Much more recently, a very common mistake that new shooters make is to close their eyes while or just after taking the shot. Besides potentially degrading accuracy (the bullet does not leave the gun immediately upon pressing the trigger; it actually takes some time for the action to allow the pin to hit the primer and then for the bullet to be pushed out of the barrel by the hot gases), it prevents you from seeing where the bullet went, and potentially correcting the error on your following shot.

The very same applies in life and in business: don’t take your eyes of your target until you hit it!

Decisions and consequences

All decisions have consequences. Sometimes the decisions are small, and the consequences are so small as to go unnoticed. Sometimes, even binary, small actions, can have life-or-death consequences.

Ponder the consequences before committing to a course of action, but know also that some of the most important decisions (like those of life and death) are imponderable; you can only try to make the best decision, but need to be ready to accept whatever the outcome is.

Of course, there is the option of not making a decision. But this, in itself, is a decision, and one that is likely to lead to the worst outcome.

Sometimes you need to shoot from the hip

There are those occasions where you don’t have the time to get ready, aim and fire. You have an opportunity, or need to avoid a threat, and action must be taken immediately. In other words, you need to “shoot from the hip”, and hope for the best.

However, Louis Pasteur was quite right when he noted that chance tended to side with people that were prepared: your situational awareness will give you that small added fraction of a second of warning, you are “locked and loaded” (ready for action) and your meticulous preparation has allowed you to hone your skills with your tool to an extent that it is all muscle memory and reflex, you don’t need to “think”.

Even more important than all of this, you have thought long and hard, beforehand, about the kind of decisions that you are likely to face, the consequences and the course of action that you would choose. When under fire, it’s not the time to question whether you are ready to shoot back. When that time-critical, one-in-a-million business opportunity lands on your lap it’s not the time to question whether you really want to be in business, or perhaps you should dedicate your life to something else. Those questions should be asked and answered long before you are in the fray, so you can either take action or say “No, thank you” without hesitation or regrets.

This story was published originally here.