1: “To create anything of value—whether it’s a product, a company, a society, or a life,” Ron Shaich writes in his powerful book Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations, “we must push through our default settings.”
How do we do that?
“By living consciously and deliberately, by making the hard choices, and by using tools … to discover what will really matter, again and again.”
Ron believes that “in life and in business, intent is everything. . . Without clear intent, we live and work by default and in reaction. Our lives are on autopilot, based on how we have done things in the past rather than how we want them to be done in the future.”
When we live with intent, we are able to look into the future and then live backwards into the present day.
Yesterday, we looked at Ron’s concept of a pre-mortem.
“Personally,” he shares, “I take time to conduct a pre-mortem once a year. I do so methodically, starting with my ultimate goals and then working back through the initiatives that will get me there in every important area of my life—health, wealth, relationships, and spirituality.”
Doing so “injects a sense of urgency into my planning,” Ron writes, “but more than that, it inspires me with the knowledge that I still have time to create the future of my dreams.”
None of us knows how much time we have left on the planet.
“But I do know this,” he notes, “if I have the courage to construct that future now, I will have a greater likelihood of having lived a successful life, which for me means a life I respect.”
2: Ron utilizes a similar “future back” process in his professional life as well—”for a new product or project, a company transformation, or a brand-new business investment,” he shares.
“In business, the end point we are visualizing is not our last years but a specific goal or aspiration,” Ron observes. “We start with our desired outcome and then work backward to discern the steps that will get us there.”
We can choose any goal we have for our business. We begin by looking three, five, or ten years out into the future.
We envision an article written about us or our company in Fortune magazine, The Wall Street Journal, or perhaps our industry’s premier publication. What will it say about what we’ve achieved?
“What would it say about how we created that success and what mattered most in creating that success?” Ron writes.
For example: “Company X had profit growth of 50 percent over the past three years. It achieved these impressive returns by creating a product that significantly outperformed its competitors.
“When asked what contributed to this success, the company’s CEO told us it came down to two decisions: Investing heavily in a new design and continually upgrading product features.”
3: As we undertake this process for our organizations, we will identify the specific goals that will matter most to us and our clients, as well as the steps to achieve these objectives.
“Utilizing this future-back process again and again,” Ron writes, “has forced me and my colleagues to imagine what would matter once the future unfolded in front of us. It forced us to focus on what we wanted to accomplish and how we would get there.
“It pushed us to recognize if we wanted to increase shareholder value, we had to build competitive advantage. To do that we had to identify opportunities and commit to initiatives that would help us exploit those opportunities.”
The other big benefit? It encourages us to think “year-to-year” rather than “quarter-to-quarter” and provides the necessary motivation to stay focused and determined.
“The future-back process can be boiled down to this essential directive,” Ron explains: “Discover today what will matter tomorrow, and then bring what matters to life.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I steering my life and work with clear, future-driven intent, or letting default habits and short-term pressures shape my days?
Action: Set aside intentional time to visualize my ideal future—then outline one concrete step I can start today to work backward and make that vision real.
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