Concept

Column B Thinking

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Column B Thinking

Column B thinking is a planning method developed by Melanie Perkins in which the desired end state is defined before any reference to current resources or constraints. Column A is where you are; Column B is where you want to be. The discipline is to write Column B first, independently of Column A, and then work backwards to a path.

The distinction

Column A thinking starts from current state: what resources do we have, what constraints do we face, what can we do with those? Plans produced this way are anchored by existing capabilities and tend to extrapolate forward incrementally.

Column B thinking starts from desired end state: what should the world look like? Plans produced this way are anchored by a vision and work backwards to figure out what is needed. Current constraints are inputs into the path design, not inputs into the vision.

The test: if your plan begins with “we have X resources, therefore we can do Z,” you are in Column A. If it begins with “the world we want looks like Z, therefore we need to acquire X resources,” you are in Column B.

The Canva application

Perkins articulated Canva’s Column B early — democratised design tools accessible to anyone globally — without reference to whether she, as a student at the time, had any realistic path to that outcome. The Column B frame made 100+ investor rejections legible as iteration data rather than disconfirming evidence. The vision remained constant; the path was revised on each attempt.

The related practice: the wild success / terrible failure pre-mortem. Before starting a project, write two futures: (1) it succeeds completely — what does that look like? (2) it fails completely — what went wrong? The exercise forces explicit confrontation with failure modes and makes the success criteria concrete before execution begins.

The 2050 vision wall at Canva’s office functions as a persistent Column B anchor: a physical description of the world in 2050 that survives quarterly planning cycles.

Relationship to other planning frameworks

Column B thinking is structurally identical to several established planning frameworks:

  • Backward design (Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design) — define the desired outcome, then plan the path.
  • Covey’s “begin with the end in mind” — one of the seven habits; start from a clear vision of the destination.
  • Pre-mortem analysis (Gary Klein) — imagine the project has already failed; work backwards to identify causes.

Perkins does not cite these but the architecture is the same. The contribution is the Column A / Column B vocabulary, which makes the distinction operationally concrete.

Relationship to crazy big goals

Perkins pairs Column B thinking with a claim about goal size: the right goal is one that makes you feel completely inadequate when you first articulate it. The two ideas are complementary. Column B thinking produces the end state; crazy big goal sizing ensures the end state is ambitious enough to require qualitative change rather than incremental improvement.

The diagnostic: if your Column B does not make you feel inadequate, it is too small. If it is merely harder than what you are doing now, it is still Column A thinking with a longer horizon.

See also