Setting the destination is crucial, and then you must determine the path. Let me share a personal story to illustrate one of the big dangers.
I really wanted my Orienteering merit badge when I was a Boy Scout. Orienteering is using a map and compass to navigate from point to point over unfamiliar terrain.
I failed on my first attempt, didn’t qualify for the badge. I read everything and practiced with my compass. I passed the written test, but failed the two practical tests in the woods. In both tests I set out first (alphabetical order). I took my bearing to the target on the map, then held to a straight line through thicket, bramble, and muck. I thought I heard the other boys a few times but stuck to my bearing. I emerged at the destination scratched up and a muddy mess to discover I was dead last. Both times, dead last. I was so late on the second test that Mr. Jones was about to send out a search party for me.
Mr. Jones – who we all admired and were a little scared of, because he had been in the Army Ranger battalion – said “You failed, Brooke.” I was crushed and humiliated. I was already an Eagle Scout and had passed every other test for merit badges before.
I worked up my courage to ask Mr. Jones what I’d done wrong, because I wanted to get that Orienteering badge.
“You failed because the purpose of orienteering is to get to the destination with the least time and effort, using the map and compass to guide you. The other boys read the map better, picked up the trail a hundred yards into the woods, curled around the swamp and had less of a climb, and got there with dry feet way ahead of you.”
This was like a 2×4 to the forehead. The next summer camp, my next opportunity, I qualified for the merit badge.
Years later I read what Abraham Lincoln said to a critic: “A compass will point you to true north, but it’s got no advice about the swamps and deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination you plunge ahead, heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp, what’s the use of knowing true north?”
Lesson learned: Be firm in your destination, but flexible in your approach.
Now there is a counterpoint situation, and it was one Mr. Jones would have known well. In wartime, especially in guerilla and unconventional warfare, attack where the enemy least expects you. Stealth requires staying off the trail and avoid the easy way. T.H. Lawrence captured the port city of Aqaba, attacking after crossing 600 miles of desert, something considered impossible. Special forces tactics are often based on surprise attacks from unlikely vectors. In business terms, sometimes the winning approach is to consciously embrace the difficult path for a high ROI.
