Achieve Your Goals #3 - Reverse Engineer a Goal
What does it mean to Reverse Engineer a Goal?
In general, it means that you start with the Finished Product (as we discussed last week) or a SMART Goal, and then go backwards to find out what you need to do today.
Let’s go back to last week’s example. We had a client who was creating a certificate and training program for making restaurants dog friendly. She defined her finished product’s minimum requirement as a single action that she could easily visualize. This action was:
“I have created a certification, and at least one restaurant is using it.”
Now, let’s Reverse Engineer this goal.
The first step is to list out the minimum requirements to achieve the finished product. In this case, they would be:
- Open a website for business with sales and contact information
- File business name and LLC with local secretary of state
- Offer to certify an interested restaurant for free
- Receive Tax ID Number
- Talk with a lawyer to discover legal feasibility and requirements of this business
- Write a sales / marketing document that can be given to restaurants
- Meet with 3 restaurants to gauge interest in a dog friendly certificate and/or staff training
After you have created such a list, the next step would be to organize it into a logical order.
For example, if creating a certificate program from scratch in your state is illegal, there is no reason to build a website or to speak to restaurant owners.
Therefore, step number 1 would probably be “Talk with a lawyer to discover legal feasibility and requirements of this business.”
I’ll now try to create a more logical order of the above items.
- Talk with a lawyer to discover legal feasibility and requirements of this business
- Write a sales / marketing document that can be given to restaurants
- Meet with 3 restaurants to gauge interest in a dog friendly certificate and/or staff training
- File business name and LLC with local secretary of state
- Receive Tax ID Number
- Offer to certify an interested restaurant for free
- Open a website for business with sales and contact information
Perhaps you do not agree with the order of this list of items. That's OK! This order makes sense to me, and your order needs to make sense to you.
If you haven’t done so yet, go ahead and write a list of the minimum requirements to achieve the finished product, and then put them into a logical order.
Hint: When you are writing down the list of requirements, hold off on putting them into an order. Just brainstorm and put down anything that comes into your mind. I believe this tactic is ultimately more efficient as we use different parts of our brain to brainstorm ideas and to organize and analyze those thoughts.
The third step is to take one or more of the first items on your list and define the True Next Step. You find the True Next Step by breaking down a task as much as possible and defining what you must do next.
If there is one thing that you can do to make yourself more productive, it is likely defining the True Next Step.
In our list, the top line item was: “Talk with a lawyer to discover legal feasibility and requirements of this business.”
But this is not the True Next Step.
Possible True Next Steps:
If I do not have a lawyer in mind, I would need to research lawyers involved in business and certification law. So, researching business lawyers online might be my next step.
If I know a lawyer who is in this field, then finding that person’s number and giving them a call would be the True Next Step.
If I do not have money to pay a lawyer, my True Next Step might be to research free and local nonprofits that help entrepreneurs and businesses. Or I might call a lawyer first, get the rate, and then save money for that meeting, etc.
Often, we find ourselves not completing a task, but there may be something that is stopping us. How can I get a lawyer, if I don’t know who to call? How can I hire a lawyer, if I don’t have money? These items seem obvious, but more often than not, tasks that are not getting completed do not have a clear True Next Step.
After going through the above steps, we should know exactly what we need to do Today. Remember that Today is all that we can control.
Finally, after completing the first True Next Step, you’ll need to define the step after that.
Remember to be flexible with your plan! In this case, if the lawyer says to our client that she cannot open a certification program until she takes a course, she would have to alter her plan and sign up for a course or redefine her business. Maybe she would only train restaurants to become dog friendly, but not certify them.
Please, go ahead and write down your Project’s Finished Product, its Minimum Requirements in a Logical Order, and the True Next Step (that you could to Today).
