Fortune favors the pre-decided.

Sami DiPasquale is looking out over a few buildings nestled between railroad tracks and the Rio Grande in El Paso. He is in the long process of starting a nonprofit called Abara, focused on immigration and people on the border. 

Sami has a clear vision, a sense that he has to acquire three adjacent properties that are right up against the river, right on the border.

They are not for sale.

These three properties are owned by three different people. And they have historic adobe buildings, including the oldest building in El Paso. And they haven’t been on the market for a long time.

The kicker? They do not yet have their 501(c)(3), donors, or even a bank account.

Nonetheless, Sami pre-decides and takes extraordinary, creative steps to prepare for the moment when even one of the properties hits the market. There’s creative financing, lightning-fast fundraising, novel legal structures, and some miraculous timing. (You find out what happened in my conversation with Sami this week on The Nonprofit CEO Podcast.)

But Sami’s approach got me thinking about examples and dynamics from other CEOs around “pre-deciding” and preparation. In upcoming episodes, April Chapman at Generous Giving talks about taking her time to get ready for a big change and then “firing cannonballs” (thank you, Jim Collins), and being ready to “rock and roll.” And Johnstone Ndunde at SIL says he makes decisions, then figures out the timing of action as “an art and a dance.”