TARGET: the tool for building a way out

Last week I made a case: define the end state before you decide what to do. Decide where you want to get to, then engineer a path to it. (If you missed it, you might like to go and check it out; this article is a bit of a two parter.)

Agreeing with that principle is one thing. Applying it under pressure is another matter entirely. So the fair question is the practical one. How?

There is plenty of good thinking here. Solution focused coaching, backcasting, goal setting theory; these are, broadly speaking, psychological frameworks. They encourage you to orient your mind toward an outcome. That is useful and necessary, but not sufficient.

In the middle of a crisis, orientation is not enough. You need an action framework: something that helps you lay a path and hold to it while everything around you moves.

That is why I built TARGET. I use it with leaders and teams to construct a pathway to an outcome, and to review progress against that outcome along the way. You are going to hear a fair bit about it over our time in these notes. Here it is. In black and white. For free. (And you're welcome).

T. Target state defined. Say precisely what resolution looks like. Not 'improve morale'. If we had arrived at our desired destination, what will have happened? What would stop happening? What would we see people doing, thinking, feeling? What specifically tells us we have succeeded? If you cannot describe it, let alone measure it, you cannot reliably aim at it.

A. Assume possibility. Hold, at the outset, that the ideal outcome is achievable. Don't let it be shut down on sentiment instead of evidence. Override blockers. Don't take no for an answer (at least for present purposes).

This is not naive optimism; it is a disciplined stance, held until something is proven impossible or genuinely suboptimal. We don't stop for perceived obstacles. Only demonstrably insurmountable ones. Premature 'that won't work-ism' is how good options die before anyone has looked at them.

R. Reverse engineer the path. If the outcome were already true, what happened just before it? And before that? Work backwards through the milestones and conditions that carry you there. Understand the markers of your journey, from here, to there. Visible. Named. Known and understood.

G. Generate and test actions. Turn the pathway into concrete steps. Thoughts turned to actions. Design the early ones to test your riskiest assumptions, but you are looking for progress, not just being busy. There will be plenty to be busy about without layering in unnecessary actions.

E. Execute with precision. Every action should point distinctly at the end state. If it does not, you are spending effort you should not be. In a crisis, time and effort are scarce; a direct line to the outcome is how you spend them well.

T. Track, review and adapt. Measure against the outcome, not against effort. 'We did a lot' is not progress. 'We are on track to our end state' is.

For any step you are about to take, ask: is this getting me efficiently closer to the end state? If it is, proceed. If it is not, don't.

Most action plans would not survive that question. Most working groups would not either.

Why there are two Ts

Look again and you will notice TARGET opens and closes the same way. That is deliberate and instructive. One T to define the ideal state. One to track, review and adapt as you go.

It is the answer to the objection everyone raises: but things change. Of course they do. The framework expects it. You set a considered target, you commit to it, you act, and then you adapt it as real information arrives. Moving your goalposts deliberately is not indecision; it is the method working.

What you can't do is refuse to set the target because it might move. A team that commits to a destination and adjusts it along the way beats a team that never decided where it was going. Every time.

It works, for real. Try it yourself and you will see

Take a problem you are sitting with, at work or at home. Write its target state in a single plain sentence. Then work one step backwards: what has to be true just before that?

How many more sentences do you have to write to connect you to that point? Write each in order. Write what takes you from here, to there.

You now have your first real action. And a test for every action after it.

That is TARGET in sixty seconds.

Next week: running toward the problem, and how to tell the difference between gathering information and hiding inside it.

Steve

The Solutionist Agenda. Clear thinking. Problems solved.