One of my old pals, and the President and business partner in my longest-running organization, InfoSource, Inc., Thomas W. Warrner, follows a set of internal operating principles to run a business.

One of these is something he calls WBT, or the Working Backwards Technique.

While what I’ll describe to you may seem quite simple — and it is — but it’s not always easy to implement in practice.

You see, most of us get all balled up in the details in many situations and we lose sight of our objectives, if indeed we even had any to begin with.

So, work it backwards, as TWW would tell you.

I’ve seen Tom use this technique while dealing with our managers and employees at InfoSource.  And, it works — every time.

So . . .

Define your end result first.  Don’t do anything until you’ve done that, and preferably have written it down.

In the case of your dream job quest, you need to define, first, what the ideal situation is for you.  (Of course, it helps if you can describe success even before that, but that’s for another topic and another day.)

Then, write it down — your dream job.  For an idea of how some others have done this, click here.  No need to get fancy, just describe the job as simply as possible.

For example, say your dream job is to run a charter-fishing business in the Caribbean.

Write that down.

Then, thinking about the end result (charter fishing in the Caribbean), describe the events, actions, or qualifications that will lead up to your objective.

Just list them out . . . at this point the order doesn’t matter.

So, in the case of your charter fishing business, you’ll need to have (probably, I’m not a charter-fishing pro) a suitable boat, a captain’s license, a business license, an advertising campaign, and a host of other things.

And, of course, if you don’t know how to run a boat in open water, you’ll want to add the necessary schooling to your list.

Then, put all those things in order, from beginning to end.

After that, start doing them.  One at a time.

We often fall short in shooting for our dreams because they seem so out of reach.  There’s so much to do to get to the end that we either never try or we give up too soon.

So, follow Warrner’s WBT and chunk up the action items, and pick ‘em off one at a time.

Let me know if you’ve used this technique sometime in your past and how it worked for you.

And, a tip-o-the-hat to Mr. Warrner.

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