(@mmonaa)

Last week I partook in my first Backcasting workshop for our hospital client. The activity was quite eye opening in many ways for both myself and the client. For one, the client discovered intricate nuances of their organization that had not been fully articulated before. In other words, they came to a couple of epiphanies that probably would not have happened had they not gone through this exercise. It is important to note that the “content” of the activity was not new. These were not revelations. The divergent thinking during the exercise was merely a step forward in realizing what existing opportunities they needed to bring to surface. Now, to step back and talk about backcasting for a moment before I apply the thinking to something I find useful in everyday life, career planning.

Backcasting is a strategic approach that focuses on desired or alternative future states. It usually follows a simple statement: after we determine where or what we want to be in 3 years, for example, what do we need to do to get there? It is a much more sustainable approach than forecasting, in my opinion, which relies heavily on probable outcomes stemmed from today. It is prediction focused rather than scenario focused. By leading with scenarios and working backwards to identify indicators, actions, risks and opportunities, you have a clearer vision in terms of a strategy.  When Matthew (@mmilan) was at Critical Mass, he presented Backcasting 101 at the Asis&t IA Summit last year in April. Its a very useful resource in acquainting you and your organization with the thinking and application of Backcasting.

Backcasting 101

View more presentations from Matthew Milan.

Backcasting at first seems like a complicated activity, but once engaged, you can apply it as a strategy tool for something common like your career for example. I say this because I inadvertently gave my friend career advice by making her do a Backcasting exercise at home. It proved to be useful. I started with the question, where do you want to be in 3 years? More specifically, what job roles do you want be in? Once the job roles (it can be skills, titles, designations, whatever) are stated I asked her to discuss where she is now in terms of her career. What her skills are, what her job title is, what her boss is like and other descriptive “current states”.

We proceeded to go back to her future states and work backwards to today, citing “indicators” that were tell tale signs of her future. For example, if she wanted to be a social media guru (this is an example) at an advertising agency, an indicator would be that her blog received 1000 hits per day. After she plotted indicators of her future state along the 3 year continuum, I asked her to describe an action item to each indicator. For example, if your blog received 1000 hits per day, what would you do next? What is your action item prescribed to that indicator? She responded by saying that she would analyze where her hits came from and start inviting more participation from her referrers or referring website. Great, now let’s talk about the risk of doing that, and then, let’s talk about the opportunity that can arise from that as well. Conducting this exercise helped her realize how she needed to proceed. The opportunities she should take, cognizant of the potential risks and also learning how to mitigate them. She could now envision how to get to be a social media guru.