28 Jan 2026 · 1 min
Bill Gallagher explains planning with the end in mind: envision where you want to be in 10 years, then work backwards to find the few critical problems to solve now. Most planning repeats what worked. Breakthrough planning reverse-engineers from the end state, like how moon missions and Everest climbs get planned.
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Big growth, big goals, requires a whole different kind of planning. If you were going to go to the moon for the first time, or if you were going to launch a brand new product, if you were going to do something that's never been done before, that isn't planned in the way that routine kinds of things are. When you're planning, planning something routine, you just do more of what you did last time that worked and less of what didn't work and you've got a plan. But when you want to do something brand new, achieve a new level of performance, launch something new, make some new difference in the world, you've got to do a different kind of planning. Stephen Covey called this planning with the end in mind. If you'll think about the end state. So go out 10 years, go out three years, go out one year, go out one quarter, think about what it looks like and then work backwards from there. So if I summited Everest, where was I? Just before that, what were the steps, where was the spot? And then what did I have there? And then just before that, where was I and what did I need to have there and how long did I get there? And you'd work your way back, knowing what you envision and imagining what the steps are without ever actually having been there. So you'd think about how you got to the moon, how you landed on the moon, how you returned from the moon. You'd think it all through, you'd plan it all out. That's planning with the end in mind. And that's very different than planning from where I am today, unclear about the future. If I plan from today, thinking about the problems that I have, and we all have lots of problems at any given point, and if I work with my team and look at all the problems and just discuss issues I might actually work on issues that would be better left just being abandoned, set aside if I really knew where I was going. So planning with the end in mind is thinking about where you want to be so you tackle the right issues in the here and now. So we start with the end, we imagine the next steps, we work our way back to the present situation and from there we realize that among our 10 big problems, we only have two that we need to solve, right? And that is the critical thing about planning with the end in mind. And it's actually liberating. Frees you up from so many thoughts and feelings and pursuits that really just don't need your time and energy. I'm Bill Gallagher, Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling Up Business Podcast and I hope that these tip shows are helpful for you. We want to give you a little idea, a little nugget that you can work with for the next week if you find these helpful and you want to know more about our other programs about our coaching. We have coaching and programs and workshops of all sizes for all stages of companies that want to get growing. You'll find all that and more@scalingcoach.com like subscribe, turn on your notifications, share these things with somebody else and we hope.
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