STANDSTILL agencies FORECAST
STANDOUT agencies BACKCAST
As we start to reach the end of 2022, many of you will be also coming to the end of your financial year.
Either way you may be always thinking about business planning for 2023, particularly in view of the challenging economic climate.
When business planning, I find STANDSTILL agencies often look at what they’ve achieved in the last 12 months and project or forecast that forward for another year. Maybe they add a few percentage points of growth on to show a bit of ambition.
Last week I was in Lisbon business planning with my colleagues at Cactus. Did we forecast? No we did not.
That’s because we practice what we preach. The only forecasting we do with our clients involves cashflow. What we actually do is backcast. And that’s exactly what we did for ourselves in Lisbon last week (as well as drink and eat enough to last us all until the end of the year!)
Backcasting is a planning method that starts with defining a desirable future and then works backwards to identify tasks, policies and programs that will connect that specified future to the present. The fundamental question backcasting asks is “if we want to attain a certain goal, what actions must be taken to get there?
Where do you want to be this time next year? What steps do you need to take to get you there?
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