Thinking-in-reverse sounds like an odd thing to do but it delivers more insight and solves tougher problems than thinking forwards. That is the reason it is called Time-Reversed Insight. And once we have mastered how to do it, we discover that it comes in handy in all sorts of problematic situations where thinking forwards only hits a barrier or even makes things worse.
Time-reversed thinking is not the same thing as undoing what you just did. It is reverse thinking – not reverse acting.
We often hear the advice “Start with the end in mind …” and that certainly sounds like it might be time-reversed thinking, but it is often followed by “… to help guide your first step.” The second part tells us it is not. Jumping from outcome to choosing the first step is actually time-forward thinking.
Time-forward thinking comes in many other disguises: “Seeking your True North” is one and “Blue Sky Thinking” is another. They are certainly better than discounting the future and they certainly do help us to focus and to align our efforts – but they are still time-forward thinking. We know that because the next question is always “What do we do first? And then? And then?” in other words “What is our Plan?”.
This is not time-reversed insightful thinking: it is good old, tried-and-tested, cause-and-effect thinking. Great for implementation but a largely-ineffective, and a hugely-inefficient way to dissolve “difficult” problems. In those situation it becomes keep-busy behaviour. Plan-Do-Plan-Do-Plan-Do ……..
In time-reversed thinking the first question looks similar. It is a question about outcome but it is very specific. It is “What outcome do we want? When do we want it? and How would we know we have got it?” It is not a direction. It is a destination. The second question in time-reversed thinking is the clincher. It is “What happened just before?” and is followed by “And before that? And before that?“.
We actually do this all the time but we do it unconsciously and we do it very fast. It is called the “blindingly obvious in hindsight” phenomenon. What happens is we feel the good or bad outcome and then we flip to the cause in one unconscious mental leap. Ah ha!
And we do this because thinking backwards in a deliberate, conscious, sequential way is counter-intuitive.
Our unconscious mind seems to have no problem doing it though. And that is because it is wired differently. Some psychologists believe that we literally have “two brains”: one that works sequentially in the direction of forward time – and one that works in parallel and in a forward-and backward in time fashion. It is the sequential one that we associate with conscious thinking; it is the parallel one that we associate with unconscious feeling. We do both and usually they work in synergy – but not always. Sometimes they antagonise each other.
The problem is that our sequential, conscious brain does not like working backwards. Just like we do not like walking backwards, or driving backwards. We have evolved to look, think, and move forwards. In time.
So what is so useful about deliberate, conscious, time-reversed thinking?
It can give us an uniquely different perspective – one that generates fresh insight – and that new view enables us to solve problems that we believed were impossible when looked at in a time-forward way.
An example of time-reverse thinking:
The 4N Chart is an emotional mapping tool. More specifically it is an emotion-over-time mapping technique. The way it is used is quite specific and quite counter-intuitive. If we ask ourselves the question “What is my top Niggle?” our reply is usually something like “Not enough time!” or “Person x!” or “Too much work!“. This is not how The 4N Chart is designed to be used. The question is “What is my commonest negative feeling?” and then the question “What happened just before I felt it?“. What was the immediately preceding cause of the Niggle? And then the questions continue deliberately and consciously to think backwards: “And before that?”, “And before that?” until the root causes are laid bare.
A typical Niggle-cause exposing dialog might be:
Q: What is my most commonest negative feeling?
A: I feel angry!
Q: What happened just before?
A: My boss gives me urgent jobs to do at half past 4 on Friday afternoon!
Q: And before that?
A: Reactive crisis management meetings are arranged at very short notice!
Q: And before that?
A: We have regular avoidable crises!
Q: And before that?
A: We are too distracted with other important work to spot each crisis developing!
Q: And before that?
A: We were not able to recruit when a valuable member of staff left.
Q: And before that?
A: Our budget was cut!
This is time-reversed thinking and we can do this reasonably easily because we are working backwards from the present – so we can use our memory to help us. And we can do this individually and collectively. Working backwards from the actual outcome is safer because we cannot change the past.
It is surprisingly effective though because by doing this time-reverse thinking consciously we uncover where best to intervene in the cause-and-effect pathway that generates our negative emotions. Where it crosses the boundary of our Circle of Control. And all of us have the choice to step-in just before the feeling is triggered. We can all choose if we are going to allow the last cause to trigger to a negative feeling in us. We can all learn to dodge the emotional hooks. It takes practice but it is possible. And having deflected the stimulus and avoided being hijacked by our negative emotional response we are then able to focus our emotional effort into designing a way to break the cause-effect-sequence further upstream.
We might leave ourselves a reminder to check on something that could develop into a crisis without us noticing. Averting just one crisis would justify all the checking!
This is what calm-in-a-crisis people do. They disconnect their feelings. It is very helpful but it has a risk.
The downside is that they can disconnect all their feelings – including the positive ones. They can become emotionless, rational, logical, tough-minded robots. And that can be destructive to individual and team morale. It is the antithesis of improvement.
So be careful when disconnecting emotional responses – do it only for defense – never for attack.
A more difficult form of time-reversed thinking is thinking backwards from future-to-present. It is more difficult for many reasons, one of which is because we do not have a record of what actually happened to help us. We do however have experience of similar things from the past so we can make a good guess at the sort of things that could cause a future outcome.
Many people do this sort of thinking in a risk-avoidance way with the objective of blocking all potential threats to safety at an early stage. When taken to extreme it can manifest as turgid, red-taped, blind bureaucracy that impedes all change. For better or worse.
Future-to-present thinking can be used as an improvement engine – by unlocking potential opportunity at an early stage. Innovation is a fragile flower and can easily be crushed. Creative thinking needs to be nurtured long enough to be tested.
Change is deliberately destablising so this positive form of future-to-present thinking can also be counter-productive if taken to extreme when it becomes incessant meddling. Change for change sake is also damaging to morale.
So, either form of future-to-present thinking is OK in moderation and when used in synergy the effect is like magic!
Synergistic future-to-present time-reversed thinking is called Design Thinking and one formulation is called 6M Design.