151 Quick Ideas for Delegating and Decision Making

20Covey Has It Right: Start With the End in Mind

If you know where you want to go, you’re halfway there. That’s the concept best-selling author Stephen Covey describes when he talks about starting with the end in mind. Suggesting that you work in a backward direction may sound odd, but it’s absolutely necessary to move you forward in the right direction.

Starting with the end in mind is a perfect principle to apply in decision making. In fact, it’s the founding premise for MBO, or “managing by objective.” The term objective often gets thrown around like a piece of strategic code, but it simply means “the end result.”

For example, all parents want to raise their children to become self-sufficient. Starting with the end in mind, in this case, means ...