Pursuing Outcomes Process

I'm pondering leading indicators this morning.  What are the signals that indicate predictable outcomes, both positive and negative outcomes.  

More broadly, the whole framework of outcomes and the activities that lead to outcomes is interesting. It's kind of like this...

1. Fact - Experience and genetic bias, which leads to ...
2. Belief - Beliefs about circumstances, which leads to ...
3. Desire - Needs or desires, which leads to ...
4. Vision - Imagined desired outcomes, which may lead to ...
5. Plan - A plan, which is a system of intermediate outcomes, which may lead to ...
6. Action - Actions, impacts on the real world, which ideally lead to ...
7. Change - Real desired outcomes, i.e. change.
8. Check - How does the change align with the desire?
9. Repeat - Repeat the above steps.

Of course, it's more complicated than that but that's the straight line idealistic flow.  The multi-dimensional version of this is much more nuanced and interesting.  The process may be terminated at any step, it may go wrong (have error introduced) at any step, it may be arbitrary at any step.  Each step also begs for a deeper analysis.  There's also the orthogonal perspective that the execution of this process is a collection of facts that inform other pursuits of outcomes.  It also may be interesting to, among other things, explore the roles of analysis and technology in this process.