Inversion
Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure, then remove it. Learn to turn any goal into a short list of preventable disasters, and to subtract before you add.
A DIFFERENT QUESTION
Ask how it fails, not how it works
Everyone around the table is asking 'how do we make this work?'. Turn the question over: what would guarantee this fails? The second question is easier to answer, the answers are concrete, and most of them are things you could prevent this week. You don't need a brilliant plan if you remove the five things that kill it.
'How do I become a better manager?' produces vague ambitions. 'What did the worst manager I ever had do?' produces a list you can act on tomorrow morning.
Inversion
Working a problem backwards: instead of asking how to reach the outcome you want, ask what would produce the outcome you don't want, and then avoid that. The mathematician Carl Jacobi was known for the advice to invert, always invert. The investor Charlie Munger made it one of his standard moves, arguing that being consistently not stupid beats being occasionally brilliant.
You can't make yourself happy on command. You can reliably remove a commute that eats two hours a day, a debt that wakes you at 3am, and a weekly commitment you dread.
Arezoo has been offered her first job leading a team of six.
Forward question: "How do I become a great manager?"
-> be supportive, have vision, communicate well ... nothing to do on Monday
Inverted: "What would make my first six months a disaster?"
1. Nobody is sure what they're supposed to be working on
2. I keep doing my old job instead of the new one
3. I avoid the one difficult conversation everybody is waiting for
4. I promise my boss dates the team can't hit
5. I never find out what the team already knows is brokenHer plan is now the opposite of that list:
- one named owner, written down, for every piece of work
- two hours blocked every week to hand over her old tasks
- the difficult conversation in week two, not month five
- no date promised before asking the person who'll do the work
- a 30-minute talk with each of the six in the first fortnightNotice how much more concrete the second list is. Nobody's answer to 'how do I become great?' is 'block two hours on Tuesdays', and yet that is the part that changes the six months.
Check yourself
Siavash is organising a weekend trip with four friends and wants it to go well. Which question is the inverted one, and the most likely to help?
- What has ruined the group trips I've been on before?
- What is the best possible thing we could do on Saturday?
- How do other people plan trips like this?
- What would make this the most memorable weekend of our lives?
Show the answer
What has ruined the group trips I've been on before?
Yes, and the answers are things he can fix: nobody booked anything, one person decided everything, no agreed budget, no plan for the drive home. Remove those four and the trip is already better than most.
Two directions on one problem
Forward: how do I succeed?
Produces ambitions: be more organised, build something people love, be a good partner. There are a thousand routes to success and you can't test any of them this week. Good for direction, weak for action.
Backward: how do I fail?
Produces a short, concrete list: run out of cash, miss the deadline, lose the one customer who pays on time. Ways to fail are fewer and more repetitive than ways to succeed, so the list is short and mostly already known to anyone who has done it.
Why removing the bad works so well
- Ways to fail are few and they repeat across people; ways to succeed are many and lean on luck and timing.
- Prevention is reliable. Removing a known problem works every time. Adding a clever idea works sometimes.
- A failure list has a first step this week. 'Be more visionary' has no first step at all.
- Not losing badly compounds. That is the same rule you met as ruin in lesson 5, seen from the other side.
Check yourself
Forward question or inverted question?
- 'How do I make this presentation excellent?'
- 'What would make the audience stop listening in the first two minutes?'
- 'What would guarantee I save nothing at all this year?'
- 'How do I build the perfect morning routine?'
- 'What made every flat-share I've had unpleasant?'
- 'What's the best possible outcome of tomorrow's meeting?'
Show the answer
Forward: 'How do I make this presentation excellent?', 'How do I build the perfect morning routine?', 'What's the best possible outcome of tomorrow's meeting?'
Inverted: 'What would make the audience stop listening in the first two minutes?', 'What would guarantee I save nothing at all this year?', 'What made every flat-share I've had unpleasant?'
SECOND USE
Try removing before you try adding
Inversion has a quieter twin: when something isn't working, ask what to take away rather than what to put on top. Removing is cheaper, faster to undo, and the obstacle is usually already inside the plan. Most of us reach for addition because adding feels like doing something and subtracting feels like giving up.
Sleeping badly? The first move isn't a new pillow, an app and a supplement. It's removing the late coffee and the phone in bed. Can't focus at work? Turning off notifications beats installing a productivity system.
Check yourself
Yasaman's team keeps missing deadlines. She decides the answer is a new project tool with better features. That is what inversion would recommend.
Show the answer
False
Inversion asks what is causing the misses: six projects running at once, dates promised before anyone was asked, tasks with no owner. A new tool sits on top of all of that, and the old problems usually move in with it. Take the causes away first, then see whether you still want the tool.
Check yourself
Farzaneh is about to sign a two-year lease on a flat she likes. She has a good feeling about it. Which inverted question deserves five minutes before she signs?
- What is the best thing about this flat?
- How do other people go about choosing a flat?
- Is there a nicer flat somewhere else in the city?
- If I'm desperate to get out of here in six months, what will the reason be?
Show the answer
If I'm desperate to get out of here in six months, what will the reason be?
Right, and every answer is checkable: noise at night, a landlord who fixes nothing, the commute in winter, a lease with no way out. Three of those she can test this week, and the fourth is a clause she can ask about before she signs.
Running an inversion in five minutes
- Write the goal in one sentence
'A calm, profitable first year for the shop.' It has to be specific enough to have an opposite.
- Ask what would guarantee the opposite
Not 'what might go wrong', which invites a shrug. 'What would I do if I wanted this to fail?' People answer that one instantly, and honestly.
- Write five, not fifteen
Stop at five. You want the failures that are likely and would really hurt, not a catalogue of everything imaginable.
- Cross out what you can't control, act on the rest
For each line that's left, name one thing you'll do this week to make it less likely. That list is your plan, and it was easier to write than the forward one.
Check yourself
Match each goal to the inverted question that helps most
Show the answer
- Keep your savings growing → What would drain them fastest?
- Stay close to your old friends → What makes people drift apart?
- Launch the product on time → What has delayed every launch we've done?
- Be someone your team trusts → What does a manager nobody trusts do?
Lesson recap
- Inversion turns 'how do I succeed?' into 'what would guarantee failure?', which is easier to answer and gives you things to do.
- Ways to fail are few, repetitive and preventable; ways to succeed are many and depend on luck.
- Its quiet twin: when something isn't working, ask what to remove before you ask what to add.
- Five likely failures, one preventive action each, is a whole plan in five minutes.
- Don't let it become pessimism: not acting is its own failure, and a list with a meteor on it isn't a plan.