Ever try solving a maze? Start at the entrance, and you’re bound to hit dead ends, backtracking, restarting, until you’re frustrated. Red in the face. But start at the exit, the end, tracing backward to the start, and the path lights up. Fewer wrong turns and quicker progress.
In the 1950s, cognitive psychologists Allen Newell and Herbert Simon named this phenomenon backward planning. They found that working backward from a goal, like in a maze, sharpens your focus, cutting through the noise and avoiding false moves.
Stephen Covey put it another way, “Begin with the end in mind.” Whether it’s Tesla’s Master Plan, the Grateful Dead’s counterculture dream, or A.A.’s path to recovery, to build momentum towards your destination, it helps to know where you’re headed.
Vision Attracts
A mission, shared openly, draws people in. You’ll attract like-minded individuals, fans, community, and eventually, tribe. People get a glimpse of your vision and if it resonates, they’ll back you, even if they are lukewarm on the project, because they share your cause.
Weight loss programs proudly display their transformations. Before and after. And they do this for a reason. It’s a clear vision of the future. The same goes for your business or your band.
This vision isn’t just for outsiders. It guides your team, too. Every decision, from product design to customer service, flows from that end.
Callie Khouri couldn’t write Thelma & Louise unless she knew, from the very beginning, that the characters were taking that final ride into the Grand Canyon. Every decision throughout the script leads to that moment. No turning back. A mission that guides each step that precedes it. And any incremental progress, as painful as it might be, is on the way to that final version of the future.
The Danger of Saying Yes
For years I worked in technology services, staffing and consulting. The mission? Helping customers reach their goals by providing best-in-class service. (Yawn.) We were working to become the premier source for technology talent in the marketplace. (Double yawn.)
But something kept getting in our way. When customers needed help in other areas—administrative work, data entry, customer service—we’d say yes.
We were like the town bike. Everyone got a ride.
We’d bend over backwards to help. All that effort came from a good place, but the unfortunate side effect was that it pulled us away from our mission. It stunted our growth.
Seth Godin tells a story about the day David Chang became David Chang. Momofuku had, in the past, accommodated Godin’s custom order: vegan Brussels sprouts. But one day, instead of hustling into the back, making a fresh batch, testing its quality on the fly, and serving the needs of one specific customer on one specific day, Chang said, “you know, we make it with bacon because we think it taste good with bacon,” and told Godin about a vegetarian restaurant a few doors down.
One option would have made him Dave the short-order cook, and the other made him Chef David Chang, legend. Godin, although disappointed he wouldn’t be eating there anymore, was excited for Chef Chang, because he’d finally decided who he wanted to serve, and pointed the restaurant in that direction.
The short-order cook has no tribe. What is there to join? To follow? To see? It lacks vision. Transaction after transaction with no teeth. Nothing to hold onto. Vegetarian Brussels sprouts are not on the menu at Momofuku. It’s not part of the mission. And if Momofuku is going to reach its potential, it needs people who will stay laser focused on executing its vision.
Godin says, “pick your customers, pick your future.” Chef Chang likes them with bacon, and he’s looking to build his future with people who feel the same.
When the Real Opportunity Arrived
One of the biggest opportunities in my career came when a customer asked us to fully outsource a large group of consultants. My firm had started out in staffing—butts in seats. But each year, we’d wiggled our way closer to consulting. The major difference is control, management, strategy. Instead of just the hands and feet (the labor), consulting is typically more strategic. It requires decision making. Not just the code for a site, but what the site should look like, how it should be architected.
This new opportunity was the next phase: fully outsourced, deliverable-based work. Instead of providing labor, in addition to strategy, we’d deliver outcomes.
We’d spent years saying yes to any random request that came our way, no matter how far it strayed from our core mission. But when presented with this real opportunity—one that aligned perfectly with where we wanted to go—suddenly we hesitated.
The thing about fully outsourced, deliverable-based work is, you’re on the hook. You could put in the work, and if it was off target, you wouldn’t get paid. Worse, you’d ruin your reputation. Prospects would dry up. It was a risk. But the reward was large projects, higher margins, and a new avenue of growth.
Plus, it’s more interesting and quite cool.
The internal conversations were endless. The risk. Were we ready? Could we manage it?
But I kept circling back to a single question: Where are we going? Where do we want to be in five years? Staffing day laborers to pick up scooters? Or creating real partnerships with our best customers?
Do we want to be in this business?
If so, let’s go.
If not, let’s move the hell on and point them to the other guys, down the street.
What we were really doing was reorienting toward our mission, our vision of the future. What did our tribe look like? How did we want to serve it? The opportunity forced us to define our end state and work backward from there.
The Path Forward
The ending dictates the beginning, and it prescribes the steps along the way. Most businesses fail because they get so focused on the near term, they lose sight of where they’re going.
We only had one choice. If we wanted to reach our mission, we had to take on the work. The other option, the larger risk, was not a misstep on a project—it was a failure to reach our goal.
This works for businesses, books, sports, and even sales pitches. If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?
First, figure out where you’re going. Then work backwards to establish the route.
Begin with the end in mind.
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