The End State IS the Start Point: The importance of back planning.
To listen to the podcast on this topic click HERE to watch the video click HERE
Back planning! YES! This is one of my most favorite things on the planet. If you have read any of the other blogs, watched the YouTube videos, or listened to the podcast, I guarantee you have heard me talk about back planning. Seriously, I’m legitimately excited just typing this. I know, I’m a nerd!
So, what the heck is back planning anyway? Well essentially, it’s just starting at whatever the desired outcome is and working backwards from there. Sounds easy when you say it like that and once you get the hang of it, it is.
At some level everyone does this in their day-to-day life. Maybe it’s something trivial or so innocuous that you don’t even realize that’s what you’re doing. Let me give you an easy example, brushing your teeth. It’s something you do a few times every day. Well, I hope you do! Before you were able complete this routine task, you had to back plan. You had to know the desired end state, which in this case is not having yuck mouth. You also had to know what resources you had, what resources you needed, how long it would take, who was involved, and where it was happening. You had all those things figured out before you ever began the task.
That’s the essence of back planning. Prior to even beginning the task you take the time to start at the desired outcome and work your way backwards through all the moving pieces that will make that desired outcome happen. The benefits to planning in this way are massive. Not just for your overall completion rate but for the morale of your team and yourself as well.
Be honest. How many times have you gone to your team and informed them that task X needed to be completed by time Y, firmly believing that you would pop back up at time Y and the task be complete? Now, how many of those times has time Y rolled around and you find out that the task is nowhere near complete, and your team lays out a laundry list of things that got in the way, or that they were missing to complete the task? Guess what. Could have been avoided with back planning.
When you take the time to back plan appropriately you are able to go to your team with all the details AND the end state. It gives them a clear objective, while pointing out all the moving pieces that they need to know to make it happen. By doing this you are able to alleviate stress from your team by not only giving them a goal to shoot for but by also empowering them with the information they need to achieve it.
The military uses this method in literally every single task they execute. Seriously, everything! And you know what, it works! It’s used so much in fact that it has its own format that is then used to brief with as well called and Operations Order, or OPORD. It was developed in 1957 by Frederick Edwin Garman while he was assigned to the Ranger and Tactics department. It’s been in use by the entirety of the military since Vietnam!
Why am I telling you this? Well put simply, if the United States military uses this method to get hundreds of 17-21 year old males to execute highly complex, joint combat operations successfully; odds are it will work for your team as well.
So, the next time you have a new target end state that your team needs to achieve, give back planning a shot.
