Thinking both forward and backward
Inversion is a mental model that gives you a way of thinking differently to solve problems. All of us leaders need new ways to solve the same issues or what appear to be new problems and challenges. By using this method, the success rate of your decisions or goals increases exponentially.
What is the Inversion Principle?
It is thinking both forward and backward. Address concepts, problems, or opportunities backward, basically turn them around in reverse. Invert.
For example: If you want to help homeless people, you don’t ask what you can do to help homeless people in our community; you ask what is causing the most damage to people becoming homeless. You are thinking backward.
Where is the inversion principle most visible in Elon Musk’s mission? He desires to help make the world better, so the human species lives. He doesn’t ask what I can do to help the world be a better place. Instead, he asks what is risking the human species today that can make it extinct? The answer: Climate change. So, he got into the EV industry with Tesla. And then to protect the planet by eliminating carbon gas hurting the world. And as a backstop to ensure the human species lives with SpaceX to give humans an alternative to live beyond earth.
Where can the inversion principle apply in your business?
Take the example everyone has at some point: hiring an employee. Ask the question before the final decision on a candidate, ”if we had to fire the candidate in 3 months, what would be the 1-3 most likely reasons we would have to do that”. What 1-3 things would we have to avoid? By asking a “reverse” question, it makes it super clear what the person would have to do to mess up and if we believe they are capable of doing that. Would they likely commit those exact errors? Using this principle will also enable you to protect and put measures to increase the success rate by mitigating the areas needing to be avoided.
As a business consultant or professional, ask yourself, what would have to occur for my business to fail? What would have to happen for my client to fail? What would have to appear for me not to grow new engagements? Then take those answers and make a plan so they do not become a reality.
Where should you be using the inversion principle? Your family, your health, your new product line, your new employee, the list is endless.
Take a cue from Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s right-hand man, who is most famous for using this principle:
It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.
While the natural tendency is to seek answers to the intuitive question, make an effort to invert, always invert your question. There’s tremendous learning in applying an inversion mental model to ask the question differently and find answers that don’t come naturally to us.
