Backcasting is a planning method that starts with defining a desirable future and then works backwards to identify policies and programs that will connect that specified future to the present.
Most people would call this having "vision". It can be pretty powerful, but it's often overrated.
A lot of people know what they want, or at least they think they do, if they gloss over all the messy details. What's really needed is the ability to break the vision into small, achievable steps that incrementally improve things along the way.
I think some of these examples are pretty easy to poke holes in, but the idea is pretty close to how I evaluate or plan around problems. Even when I’m making narrow and even urgent changes to something, I’m making a mental note if not a historical artifact tracking both my sense of the thematic problem and the general sense of where a holistic solution should go. I’m getting better at not getting too attached to the importance of every single long term goal—sometimes they’re a distraction, sometimes they’re wrong, often they’re both—but pretty much my entire professional methodology is a combination of trying to keep enough context to even think about end states, and using them to help guide short term decisions.
I a big fan of the idea of future backwards thinking — living in the future, and looking back and seeing what we need to do to get there, and seeing what the blockers are.
This works very well in domains where there are lots of first order effects and where there are small measurable goals.
In ill-defined domains dominates by second or higher order effects and vicious feedback loops, I wonder if it works that well. Let’s say you wanted to live in a world where there’s no homelessness. How would you get there?
umm, depends. you may get a list of options that are correct mathematicaly, but aren't, eh, nice.
There was a cold-war "joke" about "how to avoid enemy submarines" with an answer of "evaporate the oceans".
> wouldn’t it be great if subway trains arrived every 2 minutes?
I encourage everyone with a dream like this to visit London where the Tube does come every two minutes, and at peak comes every 90 seconds (just long enough for a train to enter a station, open then close the doors, and depart). Just don’t hold the doors open on the train, there’ll be another one momentarily.
> How should a company reimbursement process work? Should the company require employees to write lengthy expense reports and get reimbursed, or just let them put stuff on a company card? Does it matter how many employees they have?
I believe the IRS wants receipts in the event of an audit, so reimbursement programs are set up to incentivize good documentation.
Backcasting is a planning method that starts with defining a desirable future and then works backwards to identify policies and programs that will connect that specified future to the present.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backcasting
I've found it a useful technique when trying to clarify vague or incomplete requirements.