I learned from many initial failures in college baseball that to have success at the college level, I would need to incorporate visualization into my preparation and practice routine.  Specifically, learning how to visualize my at-bats and different situations that could arise during a game allowed me to be better prepared.  Flying F/A-18s in the Navy I also used visualization to prepare for flights.  A typical training flight in the Navy can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Even flying simulators can cost thousands of dollars per event.  The high training costs mean that aircrew don’t get the number of training hours that they want or need to become deadly in the air.  To compensate for not getting as many repetitions in the air or simulator, I fell back on visualization to find what I called ‘hidden reps.’  Visualization manifests itself in ‘hidden reps’ because you can fly a mission in your head countless times before stepping into the jet or simulator.  While these ‘hidden reps’ may not be visible to others, visualizing the mission beforehand allowed me to be better prepared and make the most out of the real-life training opportunities that I was afforded.

Businesses can find these “hidden reps” through strategy war games.  Strategy war games sessions allow business leaders to see the possible consequences of their plans and how their competitors or markets may respond.  By identifying potential pitfalls, company leaders can think through how they want to overcome those pitfalls and have procedures in place to proactively solve the problems rather than reacting to issues once they rear their ugly heads.

Authored By: Fletcher Vynne