Postcards from the future
Have you ever noticed that we spend so much time worrying about the chance that we may fail in the future, but very little time thinking about the possibility that we could succeed? Risk management is an entire area of expertise in its own right, but how much time do we put into success management?
Recently I've been thinking about what would happen if we could see into the future but instead of imagining the worst-case scenario thinking about what the world would look like if we had achieved our dreams. What could we learn from our future success? How could we set up systems and processes to make sure that we achieve our goals?
This morning I asked social enterprise start-up founders to write themselves a postcard from their future self. I asked them to imagine that it was about six months into the future and that they were happy with where their businesses were at. What would they say to themselves? What had they gotten right? What was making them happy?
This is what I wrote:
"Dear Georgia,
We're having a great time! We've finally moved beyond the 'setting up' phase and have a real business with cash flow and revenue! We are really respected for the work that we are doing and have even been asked to speak at a few conferences.
Got to run- so much more to keep learning!
All my love,
Georgia
PS- It's great having Chad full time and our small team!"
It was a simple exercise, but in our short attempt at fortune telling we were able to really focus on the things that we thought were essential to making sure that we were in a place that we wanted to be. None of the founders said that they wanted to make a million dollars or to build an empire, but there was great consistency with where people wanted their business to be in six months time.
The challenge for us over the coming months is to make sure that we put our time, enegergy and dollars into the things that will help us to make the future on the back of our postcards a reality. We used our post cards to create a short list of priority areas to focus on over the coming months. We will be focussing on our funding models, team approaches, websites, growing our customer bases, cash flow, establishing businesses that are not locked in to a physical location, sustainability, innovation and making sure that we keep a good social outcome at the forefront of our decision making. Our plan is that by focussing on these areas we will be on track to meeting our goals and succeeding.
That's a future that I look forward to!
