How to improve the world: planning
We can all agree that the world can and should be improved. There are numerous problems to be fixed and areas that can be improved. These improvement opportunities exist at every human scale from global warming to not knowing how to file your taxes to maximize your returns. I’m guessing you have had ideas about how some these improvements could be made. In my opinion, bringing these ideas to life is performed most effectively if you can define the knowledge hierarchy around the solution. That is, define what your improvement is, then determine why this improvement should be made, and finally determine how it can be implemented. Note, that answering these questions may take time. Sitting and thinking may not feel productive but I assure you there is a necessary amount of thought that need to go into any improvement and it is usually more effective and efficient to have put the thought in up front.
What: Define the improvement
The first step is to define the improvement you would like to see. You should be able to write a summary of it in a few coherent sentences. This is the first step and one you will most likely come back to and tweak as you answer the questions surrounding this one. For this reason, do not become overly attached to your initial definition of what the improvement looks like.
Why: Why should you or anyone else care?
This question is crucial in determining the validity of the improvement you would like to make. If you can’t answer why your improvement should be made then you need to stop and start the process over again once you have a new idea. The answers to why your improvement should be made provide the justification for the costs involved in how your improvement can be accomplished. This step is necessary and important because hopefully you and the people that would be involved in bringing your improvement to life value your/their time and would like to make the most of it. If there aren’t compelling answers to why your improvement should be made then it might be a waste of resources.
How: Moving from idea to reality.
What needs to be created/approved/performed in order for your improvement to come to life? To get this list started you should do some research to determine what other people have done. While we would all like to think that our ideas are original, most of the time they are just original for your portion of the world. This is a good thing though because it means that hopefully you can quickly discover what is needed and what works and doesn’t work. Once you have this list of how the improvement will be accomplished, ask yourself how each of those things will get done. Continue to question how each step will be accomplished until your answers seem obvious and then answer how one more time just to confirm that the answers truly are obvious. How your improvement will be implemented determines the cost. Once you have these answers you may decide that the cost is too high and if there aren’t strong/enough answers to why your improvement is being implemented then you either need to start over or revisit the what and why to determine if they can be changed to justify the costs revealed. Also, you may discover that one of the answers to how is not well defined and that may be a better improvement to work on first. If so, then you already have answered what the improvement is (the answer to how your original improvement would be implemented) and one answer to why (the original improvement idea).
There should be no “sacred cows” in your list of how your improvement will be made. If something shows up in your list of hows because “it has always been done that way” then throw it out. How something can be accomplished should be defined by the requirements at hand and not tradition. The only reason to include a “sacred cow” in your list of hows would be if the step was necessary to convince someone involved to be convinced your improvement is worth their time and resources.
Conclusion
The world can and should be improved and hopefully you are passionate enough about some area of the world to come up with and bring about some of those improvements. If you have come up with an idea for an improvement and are able to answer the what, why, and how, I would encourage you to write those answers down. This becomes your plan for how to execute your improvement. Plans are easier to follow if they exist in a tangible document. Once the plan is in place, it is time to execute. Look for my thoughts on the execution step in a future post.