As Steve Jobs once said, ‘Looking ahead, you can’t connect the dots. You can only connect them if you look backward. ‘That is correct.
Everyone can tell you what they should have done in retrospect. So, if you had it your way, every plan would succeed exactly as you arrived at it, right?
When you’re planning your next strategy, try this rear-view mirror technique – Instead of focusing on what you need to do to succeed, spend some time as a team vividly imagining failure. Gather everyone around a whiteboard and write these words at the top:‘If only we had…’
Now repeat that sentence in front of every objective to figure out all of the things you would have done or done differently if you had succeeded in hindsight. That list is now your actual plan.
Run this process alongside your usual plan-making process, and you’ll be surprised at how different the two plans are. There’s never a bad time to go back to the drawing board and simulate the inception of brilliance. Better yet, it’s never too late to gain a fresh perspective and make that idea fully work.
