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We’ve all heard the expression “hindsight is 20/20”. For most of us, this expression is used when some plan or other didn’t turn out as we had wanted. It’s a comfortable way of saying, “if only I had thought of this detail or that detail, things might have turned out better. This article will present a brief review of an alternative planning method that may give you more details to your plans…and lead to greater success.
A typical planning process is very linear in nature. You start with your current position and think about what you want to do or be by some future time. You may be planning for your retirement or your sales projections for the year…or maybe how many successful marketing campaigns you will create for clients. In any case, you are attempting to project ahead, the steps you will take to accomplish your goals.
Experts in the field of goal setting have identified several characteristics of goals that lead to greater personal success through planning. The keys to successful goal setting appear to be:
- Goals should be perceived as difficult, yet achievable. Goals that are either too easy or too hard do not motivate us to peak performance.
- Goals should be written down.
- Goals should be measurable. In addition to a measure for overall goal achievement, giving ourselves intermediate benchmarks along the path can help us achieve those goals.
- Commitment to goals is critical. One key finding is the more public the goal is, the higher our commitment to the goal will be.
- Plans for achieving goals should be as detailed as possible.
It is #5, creating detailed plans for goal achievement, that is our topic here. It’s important to notice the focus on personal goals, where you have control of at least most of the ingredients needed for success. This means you have it within your power to “Lengthen Your Stridesm” or achieve more than you have in the past by stretching your capabilities.
There are two inherent problems with traditional planning methods when it comes to creative people. Many creative people are nonlinear thinkers by nature. The creative process involves combining old pieces in new ways, or seeing and doing things in new ways. This ability to visualize something different than what has existed in the past is a “big picture” approach and the challenge becomes seeing where the pieces fit in order to form a plan. One approach that can help creative people organize the “pieces” is called “mind mapping” or “concept mapping.” In my next article we’ll take a look at mind mapping as a planning tool.
The other difficulty in traditional planning methods and thinking ahead about goals comes from the uncertainty of thinking in the future tense. The future is unknown and it is difficult to cover the range of details needed for a successful plan. In planning ahead, we tend to leave out important details and not think about alternative outcomes we may encounter.
If hindsight is truly 20/20 as we’ve always heard…why not use that hindsight…to help us plan for the future? Retrospective Pre-Action Planningsm involves setting goals and then “looking back” on a future that has not yet occurred in order to fill out the details of the plan you will use to achieve the goal. Let me explain, I am suggesting utilizing the “future perfect” tense of time for planning. Once you set your goal…see yourself as having already accomplished the goal. Then use hindsight to “look back” on how you achieved the goal. When you document the steps you “took” that lead to goal achievement, you have build backwards from the future to the present. Once you get back to the present…you merely reverse the process and implement the plan you have created.
Viewing things as in the past vs. in the future has been shown to be effective at increasing the amount of detail people can tie to specific events. One such study by Janet Bavelas asked participants to describe a vacation taken by another person. One group was asked to describe a future trip to France, the other group was told to assume the person has just returned from a trip to France. The group using the past as temporal context provided responses that were significantly fuller of quantitative details than the future oriented group.
You’ve heard about Retrospective Pre-Action Planningsm…but you probably don’t know it. In this political season…listen closely to some of the messages you’re being bombarded with and notice some subtle differences. “IF I’m elected” vs. “WHEN I’m elected” statements can be key indicators of a candidate’s confidence level of themselves in the race. It also tells you if they can truly see themselves accomplishing their goal of getting elected. IF is a view based on looking ahead, while WHEN is based on looking back…having already accomplished the goal in the mind.
What does all this mean to YOU in your daily life? It can mean a lot. The next time you are preparing for a sales call on a first time customer…visualize yourself answering the phone to confirm details for a reorder of the sale you have yet to make. What did you do that gave the customer the confidence in you to become a repeat customer? You delivered a good product, which met the customers’ need. How did you deliver a good product, which met the customers’ need? You used suppliers you know and trust to produce the creative product you showed the customer. How did you identify the creative product you showed the customer? You came to understand the customers’ needs through questions and answers and by applying your knowledge of the promotional products industry. How did you come to understand the customers’ needs through questions and answers? You prepared for your first presentation by thinking about the client, their product or service, what they wanted to accomplish, and understood the demographics of their target audience. Now that you’re back to today…reverse the process and implement the detailed plan you created.
Good luck looking back on your future. Part II will discuss mind mapping as a planning tool.