BE PREPARED!

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Clear Cut

Failing to Prepare is Preparing to Fail

Fighting for our health, property values and clean air is a team effort. Those that may not feel they are gifted at one aspect of our effort might be extremely gifted in another. Everyone has a part to play. No, this isn't one of those "It takes a village" pep talks, but when it comes to teamwork, few coaches can lay claim to the record or methods of the late great John Wooden of UCLA basketball fame.

Coach Wooden had a saying that I use in my daily and competitive life. "Failing to prepare is preparing to fail." I love this saying because it is very true, and to me, as an Eagle Scout, it has it's roots in the Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared".

To prepare for our legal battles will require fund raising, which Beth and company have done a wonderful job of, and preparation, which is going to require even more of our teams considerable talents.

Our recent failures in the justice system shouldn't get us down. We can see they were avoidable. Failure is an unsurpassed learning tool. Upon failing, we owe it to ourselves to be honest in our self examination and learn from it so we don't repeat our mistakes, and thus, increase our chances of future success.

I don't think it's important to dwell on our mistakes, but it is a good idea to organize ourselves in a way that will prevent us from making the same type of errors going forward. I think we should be aggressive in our fund raising efforts and I think we should bring in our "special teams", that is, the people on our team that have specific legal experience preparing attorneys for cases. We are very lucky to have a number of these talented people on our team.

This would free-up the fund raising team to excel at their job while utilizing those with specific legal skills to make sure we prepare our lawyers with the specific information it takes to win. We may want to make haste in raising funds, but we need to take our time in preparing our legal battles and to make sure our representatives are the most well informed in the court room.

They need to "Be Prepared".