Ask Clients to “Remember the Future”

A favorite technique I used when mediating custody and divorce cases — and that I still use today in my consulting — is one where I ask my clients to “Remember the Future.”  Here’s a description of the exercise (as used in a product development context) from the Innovation Games website:

Hand each of your customers a few pieces of paper. Ask them to imagine that it’s some time in the future and that they’ve been using your product almost continuously between now and that future date (it could be a week, or a month, or a quarter – pick a time frame that is appropriate for your product). Now, ask them to go even further – an extra day, or week, or month. Ask your customer to write down, in as much detail as possible, exactly what your product will have done to make them happy (or successful or rich or safe or secure or smart –choose the set of adjectives that work best for your product).

In a professional services context, don’t ask your clients the outcome they desire.  Instead, ask them to imagine their life/business/family a year (or more) from now and then describe in detail what you’ve done to help them succeed.  It is a tremendously powerful exercise that prompts us to think differently about the future because it has already occurred:

This game is based on numerous studies in cognitive psychology that have examined how we think about the future. When we ask the question “What should our product do?” we are not given a frame of reference for comparison. When we ask the question “What will our product have done?”, we generate more fanciful, richly detailed, sensible, and longer descriptions, because it is easier to understand and describe a future event from the past tense over a possible future event, even if neither has occurred.

Give it a try next time you have an initial client meeting.  I remember that you found it very helpful.  ;-)

And check out the entire Innovation Games website.  There are lots of great exercises you can use to grow your business and serve your clients better.