How to work backward to move forward

Plus highly biased memories of a former coworker who probably wasn’t as awful as I remember, yet another table (I love tables!), and a random grammar deep-dive.

Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here. 

Early in my pre-academia career, I worked briefly with a guy I couldn’t stand. Mel (name changed to protect the annoying) was a young, centre of the wheel of power/privilege former politico. He had worked on political staff teams supporting cabinet ministers. He knew who was who and who their people were. He spoke fluently in government acronyms. He was confident to the point of arrogance, brash to the point of abrasiveness, and contemptuous of people I respected – and of me. While I have no evidence of this, I suspect him of being the first person to introduce the phrase “well actually” to popular vernacular. 

He was, simply put, an asshole. And for this reason, it pains me that Mel taught me one of my most useful career skills. 

We were both on a team responsible for an important event. Other than the date (three months out) and the budget (adequate, not extravagant), no plans were set. There were a lot of decisions to make: venue, programme, speakers, food, advertising, and everything else. As the team rattled off ideas and options, the event began mushrooming. Within ten minutes of brainstorming, the event grew to become something that would be tricky to pull off in six months, much less the three that we had to work with. Stress filled the room. This event in this timeframe was impossible! Crisis!!!

Mel, quiet until this point, couldn’t take any more of our nonsense. “You guys are doing it all wrong,” he said. “You can’t plan an event looking forward.”

I said something useful, like “Huh?”

Mel explained to us, with as much patience as he could muster (which wasn’t a lot), how the political advance teams he had been involved with had planned events. “You need to set a clear picture of what the bare minimum of success for the event looks like, and what is absolutely necessary to get that result. Then you work backwards from the event date to identify milestones and attach deadlines.”

He got up, took over the dry-erase marker, and wrote the event date on the board. Mel then started peppering our team with questions. What was the event supposed to achieve? What did that require? Given that, what needed to be in place on the actual event date? What needed to be done a week before? Two weeks before? A month before? Whenever someone raised an idea that was unnecessary to the bare minimum success criteria, he ruthlessly dismissed it and kept moving us forward.

He continued asking relentless questions and recording the team’s answers on the whiteboard. Action steps with deadlines began appearing before our eyes. Unnecessary things we had been debating earlier fell by the wayside. With roughly 15 minutes of really uncomfortable questions, a doable plan was created. It was, simply put, magic.

Mel then put down the dry-erase marker, gave us all a smug look, and walked out of the room.

Asshole.

I learned two important things that day. The first is that just because I personally don’t like someone doesn’t mean that they aren’t valuable to the team. The second is that planning backward is more effective than planning forward.

That second lesson is what today’s small thing to try immediately is all about.

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Create a backward timeline

While I rarely have any involvement in event planning these days (thankfully), I use backward planning for most projects. I find it keeps me focused on the important and necessary tasks. For things with firm deadlines (e.g., grant applications, revise and resubmit submissions, invited talks), backward planning also is highly motivating as it forces me to face exactly how much (or little) time I have to get the tasks completed. 

To create a backward timeline, work through the following questions:

What is the deadline? This could be a firm deadline or a self-imposed deadline. For the sake of example, I am going to use the deadline for Canada’s SSHRC Insight Development Grant (IDG), which is due 2 February 2023.

What counts as the bare minimum of success? The goal of this question isn’t to lower your standards. Instead, it is designed to help you get really clear on all of the parts that need to be achieved. For the IDG example, I will define the bare minimum of success as “application submitted before the submission portal is closed.” 

You might (reasonably) be thinking, “That is not good enough! I don’t just want to submit a grant application. I want to submit a successful grant application.” And of course you do. But a successful grant application assumes you achieve the bare minimum goal of “application submitted before the submission portal is closed”. (Granting agencies do not fund unsubmitted grant applications.) So for the purposes of this planning exercise, let’s go with the bare minimum. You can add complexity later if you must.

Working backward, what things need to have happened for the imagined future to be true? Imagine yourself on the deadline date. You have achieved your bare minimum of success. (Or greater, but again, for the purposes of this exercise, put that thought aside for now). What must have happened for this imagined future to be true? And for that to have happened, what would need to be true? Keep asking these questions until you get back to today.

This makes more sense through illustration: 

• In the IDG application example, to have an application submitted before the submission portal closes, you need to have your application receive university-level compliance approval. What must have happened for this imagined future to be true?

• Well, for your application to receive university-level compliance approval, you need to submit a full application to the university before the university compliance review deadline. What must have happened for this imagined future to be true?

• To submit a full application by the compliance review deadline, you need to have all necessary unit/faculty approvals. What must have happened for this imagined future to be true? 

• To have all necessary unit/faculty approvals, you need to submit a full application to your unit/faculty by its deadline. What must have happened for this imagined future to be true? 

• Well, to submit a full application by that deadline, you need to complete a final full application. What must have happened for this imagined future to be true? 

I think you get the idea. It is “what must have happened for this imagined future to be true?” all the way down. 

Asking these backward planning questions is an eye-opening process. You start to identify gaps in your knowledge and ask yourself important questions. (Examples: Does my university require all of these approvals? What are the deadlines? What are the parts of a full application? Who can help me with the budget side, or with the student training section?) A plan starts to form. This takes us to the final big question.

Working backward, what timelines do I need to meet for the imagined future to be true? The final step is to create a backward timeline. Here, you again work backwards and attach deadlines to each of the milestones you previously identified. I find it helpful to use a table. Let’s return to our example:

Two hot tips for creating a backward timeline: 

1. Fight the temptation to be optimistic in your time estimates. See “how to quit lying to yourself about how long things will take” for ideas on that front. 

2. When steps involve other people, give them sufficient time to be helpful to you. Colleagues, research facilitators, ethics officers, administrative staff, teaching and learning staff, and everyone else you work with all have their own equally busy schedules. A lack of appropriate planning on your part should not become a burden or crisis for someone else.

And two bonus hot tips for anyone who is actually preparing a SSHRC IDG application right now:

3. Many universities offer excellent internal review services. If this is available to you, I strongly encourage you to participate. I have heard such reviews improve success rates considerably.

4. My table dates are hypothetical and not recommendations!

In my experience, backward planning works well for teaching, writing projects, research grant applications, and project management. If you haven’t tried it yourself, I encourage you to do so.

And Mel, wherever you are in the world, thank you for teaching me this skill. It has served me well.

Chipping Away: What I Have Been Up To

A quick update on some of my own activities since my last newsletter, since I have your attention:

• Research suggests that backward planning can improve student performance. If you want to share the backwards planning idea with your students, be sure to check out my most recent Skills Agenda column, “Teaching students the benefits of planning backwards.” You can share the column with your students and/or use the teaching activity I describe (or create your own).

• I co-designed a new workshop, “Research 101 for Public Servants” for our JSGS Policy Workshop series. I am a strong believer in lifelong learning and look forward to the workshop later this month.

• Winter has arrived in Saskatchewan (yes, I choose to live here) and I have shifted some of my running and walking to my treadmill. While I prefer to run outside, treadmill running has a fun advantage in that Storm likes to hang out with me. I say “treadmill” and she runs to the basement to get into her special spot where she sits until I am done running. She is adorable. Photo evidence below.

Until next time…

Do you use backward planning? What is your own planning approach? I would love to hear about it, so please comment and let me know. And as always, Academia Made Easier relies on word of mouth to grow, so please forward this to two or three people in your network. I appreciate your engagement!

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. Being Canadian means always struggling between American and British spellings. This came up for me with this discussion with respect to backwards. Is it planning backward or backwards? A backward timeline or a backwards timeline? According to both Grammarist and Grammar Girl, Americans prefer the non-s spelling for everything, while Brits use the non-s spelling for adjectives and the s spelling for adverbs. (I like Grammar Girl’s tip: “The way I remember that “backward” is the word in American English, is to remind myself that Americans like shortcuts. For example, I’m willing to bet we eat in our cars more often than British people do. So think about how Americans like shortcuts, and then think about how we lopped the S off “backwards” to make it shorter.”) Given all this, it is proper to refer to planning backwards or backward, but only to a backward (note the non-s) timeline. I share this in case there are any other grammar-loving geeks out there who find this kind of thing interesting. (Anyone? Anyone?)

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Loleen Berdahl, Ph.D.: I am a twin mother, wife, runner, cat lover, and chocolate enthusiast. I spend far too much time on Twitter and binge-watching television, and my house could be a lot cleaner. During work hours, I am the Executive Director of the  Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. I am the author of University Affair’s Skills Agenda column and my most recent books are  Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD and Explorations: Conducting Empirical Research in Canadian Political Science.