A Historic Heist
In 1985, two college dropouts performed one of the most infamous art heists in history. After crawling through an air conditioning duct, these “amateur” burglars stole 124 artifacts from the National Museum of Archaeology in Mexico City shown above. One of their prized acquisitions was a Mayan ruler jade death mask.
After later being apprehended by authorities, the investigation uncovered the artifacts were almost traded for cocaine.
This heist captured the imagination of the public. So much so, their efforts inspired the 2018 film Museo.
So how did these inexperienced thieves pull off such a task?
The Leadership Lesson
While the two individuals lacked significant education and experience, they more than made up for it with preparation. A further investigation revealed the burglars canvased the museum over 50 times prior to the theft.
The leadership lesson we can all take from this historic heist is preparation almost always beats talent when talent isn’t prepared.
Benefits Of Preparation
If you are facing an upcoming significant task or assignment, the following are 10 benefits to being fully-prepared:
- Being fully-prepared gives you more confidence. You’ve done it over and over again.
- Being fully-prepared lowers your stress and anxiety. There is less to worry about. You’ve made the mistakes in practice so therefore, you’re less likely to make them in the game.
- Being fully-prepared improves your focus. You are more “locked in.”
- Being fully-prepared reduces mistakes. You have a greater attention to detail.
- Being fully-prepared allows you grow deeper in your skills. You will simply get better because you’ve practiced more.
- Being fully-prepared helps eliminate assumption. You take nothing for granted.
- Being fully-prepared makes you more efficient. You remove the non-essentials.
- Being fully-prepared creates a greater sense of ownership of the results. This is because you’ve invested so much time and resources.
- Being fully-prepared blossoms creativity. A common misconception is we need to think outside the box in order to be more creative. The opposite is true. Constraints improve creativity. Everyone has a box. This box represents your boundaries. Once identified, being fully-prepared shows you how to fill it.
- Being fully-prepared increases your odds of success.
If two amateurs can pull off one of the greatest art heists in history because of their preparation, you can accomplish significant things through preparation as well.
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