Goal setting and Reverse Engineering

Set your goals right

There is a lot of literature around how to set goals such as SMART goals and this will help formulate your goal. The next important step towards reaching your goal will be the question as to “how”.

Reverse Engineering

Reverse Engineering in its original meaning is the process in which you have a finalised product, e.g. from a competitor, and reproduce the same product by examining and reverting its composition and built.

Basically, you know what you want and you work backwards, step by step, in order to understand what is needed to get there. A similar approach can be used for your personal and/or professional goal settings.

Get an idea of where you want to be in x years and then break down, step by step, how you will get there.

Example

The set target is to run a Mentorship Program Kick Off Event on August 22nd 2019 with 10+ participants. The target is Specific: hold a Kick Off Event, Measurable: has the event taken place? Has the minimum number of participants been attending?, Agreed upon: onboard all parties that need to give their ok, Realistic: give yourself enough time, Time-based: set a day when the event shall be happening.

If you want 10 people to attend the event and you know that the dropout rate is at 30 %, you should have at least 14 participants ready to go, so that if 4 cancel, you still have 10.

You know there will be a 50/50 chance that two interested participants do match according to their skills etc, so you should have at least 21 interested contacts in order to make 7 matches (assuming that per 1 Mentee you need 2 options in Mentors or vice versa).

Let’s assume that 1 out of 3 people who read your message will be interested in the program, so you have to get 63 people to read your message.

When sending out messages to people, only 20 % (at max) open the email, so you will have to message 315 people at a minimum to have the best chance of achieving your initial target.

Reverse engineering is easiest done when tangible,For less numeric targets this approach will be slightly different, but the idea is the same:

Which position do I want to hold at which time of my life and what shall be the industry I work in? Then break it down to which steps are in between now and there and how you will reach one of those.