Applying Harry Potter 'reverse engineering' to your meetings.

I was listening to a Podcast earlier this week. An idea came up from one of the speakers. They explained how they reverse engineered the entire first Harry Potter movie.

They went through it scene by scene and wrote down:

• The setting • The dialogue • The “plot” action

It took them 5 hours. As a result they had a “template” for the story.

This got me curious and I discovered this reverse engineering of storytelling is a ‘thing’. Here’s a twitter thread with another Harry Potter breakdown.

Take a look it's interesting stuff!

Which brings me to some questions for you. These might bring some insights for applying 'reverse engineering' or 'forward engineering' to your meetings with clients.

1. What would it be like to plan each client meeting like a scene in a movie, or a chapter in a book? Look in advance at the plot, sub-plot, characters, dialogue, and timing? How might each sub-plot drive the main plot forward?
2. What would it be like to reverse engineer a productive (or awful) client meeting? Look in the rear view mirror at the timings, characters, and dialogue? Figuring out how the sub-plots emerged and the main plot progressed?

You might take your answers and insights, use the best bits, and engineer exceptional client meetings right?

Mini-mission

Chose one of the questions and apply it to a situation you can engineer, or reverse engineer. Reemeber your aim is to create a template for better client experiences in the future.