Jasper is the founder of Raundalen Consulting and has created a playbook for high-performance project management. He is also the project management advisor to 100+ projects.
Guest Author: Jasper Polak
Big goals, small steps.
I spent two hours in a workshop with a fellow creator today. Sharp guy. Great business. He knows what he wants. But he didn’t know how to get there. So we played one of my favorite games in business: reverse engineering.
It works like this:
1) First, we defined the future state.
Get specific. Describe what success looks like, how you’ll measure it, and when you’ll achieve it.
Yes, you can dream big. Set the bar high, inspire your team, but be realistic.
2) Then we mapped the current state.
On all the things that you described above, where are you today? If revenue in 12 months is X, what is it today? What about the margin?
3) We identified the gaps.
If you know A and you know B, you can figure out what the gaps are. You may need a new product or service. A new contractor or supplier. Anything that you need to get you to your goal.
Note: I said anything you need. Strategy execution is about choosing what not to do. There are 100 shiny objects to choose from; picking the right ones is half the job done. Focus is everything.
4) We broke the gaps down into projects, and the projects into tasks.
If your goal is to sell $500K with a product that doesn’t exist, what do you need to do? You need to develop it, build it, test it, market it, and sell it.
Those are 5 different projects. Work your way back on the calendar.
Split it up into projects of max 3 months. Don’t bother about the details of a project in Q3 yet – focus on what’s ahead of you now. Knock over the lead domino. Break the project down into tasks, assign them to people, and get going. In a matter of hours, we went from an ambition to a crystal-clear roadmap.
He knows what to do tomorrow, next week, and next month. He knows how to measure progress and define his next steps. Is it a guarantee that it’ll work? Heck no.
But it sure is a lot less daunting than trying to climb a mountain without a map or guide.
Give it a shot – it’s simpler than you think.
Check out the original tweet here.
