Where do you see yourself?
Our view of the future drives our behavior. The psychological concept of teleology tells us that we are goal oriented, we do things in order to affect our future. Our future outlook may even make us unique in the animal kingdom, where animals are reactive creatures rather than planning ones.
Therefore, we often ask clients, colleagues, or ourselves – “how do you imagine X to look 3, 5, 10 years from now?” Or my favorite, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Frequently, the answer is a blank stare, or something half-baked. How do we clarify the image of the future? How do we free ourselves from the past and present to see what truly can be?
In Metronomics, the 3HAG (3 Year Highly Achievable Goal) is the keystone, bridging together the immediate actions with long term goals and ensuring they are aligned. Having a clear image of where we are going and where we want to be in the future is therefore absolutely essential.
In one of my (sadly fairly infrequent) conversations with Marius de Beer, (I believe we were actually talking to a client), he made the prompt that you see on this card. His way of jumpstarting the imagination process is incredibly powerful and I have used it many times since, in various forms.
Imagine yourselves at an industry event, or reading some periodical, or perhaps seeing something on social media. What is it, when read or overheard (unprompted), makes you think “damn, we’ve done it – the effort was totally worth it!!”?
In some cases, clients came back with a full article, even typeset to look as though it came from a specific newspaper! Talk about a clear image. Whether you take your imagination this far, or you write only the headline or the first sentence of such an article; solidifying the vision helps everything that comes after (or, from the future point of view, before). This future-anchored mindset helps you move mentally to that time, and then look BACK to see what are the things that needed to happen in order for this image to become true.
Everyone knows the term post-mortem. What we are talking about here, is a pre-parade. (Check out Chip and Dan Heath’s Decisive for more on that topic.). Imagine the happy outcome, be clear and specific about how it looks. Then work back – but mentally staying in that future point in time – and work through, what needed to be true for that moment to materialize? Which of those necessities you can control and which you can’t?
