Get Results by Thinking Backwards

How do you get real results? How do you know where to begin? It all starts with an end goal to achieve.

US President John F. Kennedy knew how to draw backwards: he started with the desired outcome of landing a man on the moon and bringing him back safely to Earth. NASA scientists took over and designed backwards, drawing a way to get the desired results by reversing each step:

  • landing on the moon and taking back off
  • getting in and out of moon orbit
  • docking and undocking spacecraft in orbit
  • space walks
  • building space suits for people
  • controlling huge multi-stage rockets in space
  • operating rocket engines and spacecraft in a vacuum and without gravity
  • getting the person back safely
  • putting a person in space in the first place

Getting your results can become managable when you breakdown the process of getting there. What results do you want to achieve? Identify the outcome first and work backwards from there to know where to begin.

Sep 21, 2007 |

2 Responses to “Get Results by Thinking Backwards”

Chris Tingom 27 Dec 07

I love it! That’s a really good way to envision a business. What is the end goal and what steps do we need to achieve it.

Ward 31 Dec 07

Thanks Chris. What we are really interested in is the process of solidifying the steps involved in reaching your desired outcome. We believe it is a process of first creating and brainstorming and then later subtracting and refining. I’ll post next week more on this process.

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