 | What do you want? This is the definitive question in NLP. An outcome is what you want – a desired state, something you don’t have in your present state. Outcomes ‘come out’ when we achieve them, hence the name, and the first step towards achieving them is to think them through carefully. Why you want your outcome and whether you should want it are questions that need an answer. NLP outcomes are different from targets, goals and objectives because they have been carefully considered and meet certain conditions that make them realistic, motivating and achievable. |
By setting an outcome we become aware of the difference between what we have and what we want. This difference is the ‘problem’. When you have set an outcome and are clear about your desired state, then you can plan to make the journey from one to the other. You become proactive, take ownership of the problem and start to move towards a solution. When you do not know what you want, there are many people who are only too delighted to set you to work getting their outcomes.
An outcome is not the same as a task. An outcome is what you want. A task is what you have to do to achieve it. Don’t do tasks until you set your outcomes.
Problems cannot be solved unless you have an outcome.
Change is a journey from an unsatisfactory present state towards a desired state – your outcome. You use various resources to help you make the journey.
NLP basic change
There are four basic questions you need to ask to make this journey successfully:
| THINKING IN OUTCOMES |  |
There are two aspects to outcomes:
The opposite of outcome thinking is ‘problem thinking’. Problem thinking focuses on what is wrong. Our society is caught up in problem thinking. We notice what is wrong and the next step is allocating blame, as if bad things only happen because people make them happen deliberately. This seems especially true in politics. Many people get lost in a labyrinth of problems, finding out their history, cost and consequences, asking questions like:
‘What’s wrong?’
‘How long has it gone on for?’
‘When did it start?’
‘Whose fault is it?’
‘Why haven’t you solved it yet?’
These questions focus on the past or present. They are also guaranteed to make you feel worse about the problem because they really push your nose in it.
Problems are difficult because the very act of thinking about them makes us feel bad and therefore less resourceful. We do not think as clearly, so it is harder to think of a solution.
Problem thinking makes the problem even harder to solve.
It is much more useful to think about problems in terms of contribution and ask:
‘What was the other person’s contribution towards that problem?’
‘What was my contribution towards the problem?’
‘How did those contributions add up to the problem?’
These questions lead us in a more useful direction: what do we want instead and what are we going to do about it?
| HOW TO STRUCTURE OUTCOMES | |
There are nine questions you need to ask when working with outcomes. These are known as ‘the well-formed conditions’. When you have thought them through, then your outcome will be realistic, achievable and motivating. These conditions apply best to individual outcomes.
1 Positive: What do you want?
Outcomes are expressed in the positive. This is nothing to do with ‘positive thinking’ or ‘positive’ in the sense of being good for you. Positive here means ‘directed towards something you want’ rather than ‘away from something you wish to avoid’.
So, ask, ‘What do I want?’ not, ‘What do I not want, or want to avoid?’
For example, losing weight and giving up smoking are negative outcomes, which may partly explain why they are hard to achieve. Reducing waste, reducing fixed costs and losing fewer key staff are also negative outcomes.
How do you turn a negative into a positive outcome? By asking: ‘What do I want instead?’ and ‘What will this do for me?’
For example, if you want to reduce your debt, you can set the outcome to improve your cash flow.
2 Evidence: How will you know you are succeeding/have succeeded?
It is important to know you are on track for your outcome. You need the right feedback in the right quantity and it needs to be accurate. When you set an outcome you must think how you will measure the progress and with what degree of precision.
There are two kinds of evidence:
1 Feedback as you progress towards the
