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Proactive Hindsight

Proactive Hindsight

A Comprehensive Tool For Achieving Any Goal

Does your organization need to achieve a goal but you can’t get everyone to agree on what the goal is?  Or if you know your goal, do you lack a process for achieving it?  Or do you know your goal and have an achievement process but are  having trouble getting everyone to enthusiastically commit to the goal and the process?  Please read on to see how the Proactive Hindsight Goal Achievment Process (PHGAP) can solve all of these problems and help you achieve any goal.

 

The 7-Step Proactive Hindsight Goal Achievment  Workshop Process

  1. Articulate your organization’s vision.
  2. Establish and agree on a goal that aligns with your vision, and a timeline for achieving it.
  3. Uncover the obstacles to achieving the goal.
  4. Define the goal’s characteristics.
    1. Provide “rich” goal details
    2. Discover the “whys” for achieving the goal
  5. Imagine already having achieved the goal, then look back and see what you did and how you and your environment changed.  For example, in your richly imagined future, you probably have:
    1. A new mindset (values/attitudes/beliefs)
    2. New skills/capabilities
    3. New tools/technologies
    4. New interpersonal relationships (allies/participants/mentors)
    5. New activity habits
  6. Finalize and prioritize a step-by-step plan for achieving the goal.
  7. Follow the plan.

 

Key PHGAP Benefits

  • Validates the appropriateness of your goal, so you avoid wasting time by committing to the wrong goal.
  • Sets a specific timeline for goal achievement, so the goal stops feeling like a wish and starts to feel real.
  • Uncovers the obstacles to achieving the goal and begins generating ways to overcome them, making them feel less intimidating.
  • Creates a strong emotional connection to the goal that continuously and automatically reinforces its achievement.
  • Reveals the mindset, skills, tools, relationships and activity habits necessary to achieve the goal.
  • Creates a prioritized, step-by-step plan for eliminating obstacles and achieving the goal, so all activity is applied only toward those actions that move the group toward the goal.
  • Saves time, effort and frustration.
  • Is far more pleasant and rewarding than traditional goal-setting, so participant resistance is significantly reduced and participants feel energized by working on the process.

 


Experience Right Now How The PHGAP Works

To demonstrate for yourself the difference between traditional goal setting and PHGAP, try this simple exercise.

Imagine your goal is to get your car washed.  It’s filthy, cluttered, you’re embarrassed to be seen in it.  Somebody wrote, “Wash me” in the grime on the back window.  Now imagine all the things you have to do to achieve your goal.

You have to set a specific time to do it, then spend an hour or more driving to the car wash, waiting in line and parting with your hard earned money to pay the attendants.  In addition, you have to hope they don’t scratch the paint or steal the quarters you keep in the ash tray or find anything embarrassing under the seat.  If you wash the car yourself, you have to get out the hose, fill a bucket with water, put on your old clothes, get wet and sloppy, and probably spend a good deal more than an hour at it.

Please take a minute to notice how you feel.

———-

Now, use the Proactive Hindsight approach.  Imagine you’ve just finished getting the car washed.  It’s cleaner than it’s been in months. – sparkly clean in fact.  The paint and trim gleams.  And when you get in, the clutter is gone and it smells good.  How does it feel to own such an attractive car?  Imagine driving past your neighbors and co-workers in your nice clean car.  How do they react?  How do you react to their reactions?

Now, please take another moment and notice how you feel.

———-

If you’re like most people, your emotional and intellectual experiences of the car-washing process from the two different perspectives were probably quite different, even though the actions you imagined as necessary to get your car washed were identical in both situations.

Your emotional experience with the traditional goal setting process was probably either somewhat neutral or actually unpleasant.  The obstacles to the goal of washing your car seemed large and achievement of the goal felt uncompelling compared to the hassle of getting it.

But with the PHGAP, notice how you felt the pride and pleasure of a clean car before you had to do the actual work of getting it that way, so taking the steps necessary to achieve it seemed more worthwhile.

In addition, future obstacles when seen from the present loom large and seem intimidating.  They make many people reluctant to fully commit to achieving a goal because they’re afraid of the obstacles, so they drag their feet in the hope of not having to encounter them.  This approach/avoidance behavior acts like driving with the brake on.  You use up a lot of energy getting nowhere.

However, looking back from the future at obstacles that have been overcome makes them seem far less intimidating and far more manageable, especially when paired with the feeling of satisfaction that comes from having achieved the goal.  In fact, looking back on an obstacle that’s been conquered probably feels satisfying rather than intimidating, which reinforces the desire to achieve the goal even more.

PHGAP workshops take between 10 and 16 hours and are conducted in 2-4 hour segments.  For a personal consultation to find out if a PHGAP workshop will help your organization achieve its goals, call Art Fox at 773-919-3478 or email info@quickbizskills.com and put “PHGAP Workshop” in the subject line.