Outcome Thinking with SOCRATES
Purpose: To provide an easy-to-remember summary of the key criteria and questions to help you develop a really “Well-Formed Outcome”. Using this model will significantly increase personal achievement over time and can also increase the immediate effectiveness of all your activities, for example, in meetings, negotiations and personal coaching sessions.
|S||Specify your goal||What is the specific goal you really want to achieve?
Is it stated in positive language?
If “Moving Away From” the Present State, what do you want instead of the problem?
|O||Own it||Is it within your control to make happen?
If not, what can you bring within control?
|C||Check your evidence for having achieved it||Step into it – ‘As if’ it is already achieved.
Allow it to become fully associated in your mind:
What are you seeing?
What are you hearing?
What are you feeling?
What are you thinking?
|R||Remember how you’ve achieved this particular goal||Looking back, how have you done this?
What skills and resources have you used?
|A||Add in your higher level ‘interests’||What does achieving this do for you?|
What does it mean to you?
What else is important to you about this?
|T||Test against the needs of others most closely affected||How does your achievement ‘dovetail’ with the needs of others affected by it?|
Is this acceptable to you?
What do they need at the same time?
|E||Ecology and other effects||Looking at the bigger systems that may be affected:|
What is the impact of this achievement?
What are the further consequences?
What other ripples can you identify?
|S||Step out and start||Looking back, what were your first steps?
Dissociate – Is the image truly compelling?
Test commitment (a score out of 10)
10 = Committed
8-9 Ask what has to be true to make it 10?
7 or less? – Check for any hidden positive by-products of the Present State and incorporate them. Or, change the goal!