A concept · The Art of Questioning · Strategy
Inversion
To solve a problem, study how it could go wrong.
The wedding plan had the band, the flowers and the speeches, and nobody checked whether the venue had a licence. The launch had the campaign and the press list, and a sign-up form that broke on phones. We put our effort into the things that would make it go well, and it was ended by one thing that made it go wrong, which everyone could have named in advance. Why do we never write that list?
What Inversion means
Inversion is the practice of solving a problem backwards: instead of asking how to succeed, we ask what would guarantee failure, and then we make sure none of it happens. Stated, it sounds like a trick. Owned, it becomes the first ten minutes of any plan. We start to write down the short list of things that must never happen, and we treat it as a different kind of list from the long one of nice-to-haves. We stop believing that a pile of good moves can offset one ruinous one. Before: the plan is a list of what we will do. After: the plan begins with what we will not allow, and we pursue the rest with more confidence, not less.
Inversion examples: where it shows up
- At work: the project retrospective we could have written before the project, if anyone had asked what would sink it.
- With money: the fastest ways to lose everything are few and well known, and avoiding them beats every clever way to get rich.
- At home: asking what would make this holiday miserable produces a better packing list than asking what would make it perfect.
Where it sits
Concept 1 of 5 in The Art of Questioning, a journey in the course The Examined Mind.
See where Inversion sits on the sky →
Nearest on the sky
- Falsifiability
- Margin of Safety
- The Pre-Mortem
- Second-Order Thinking
- The Obstacle Is the Way
- The OODA Loop
A filled dot marks a star that is already open to walk.
Knowing it isn't owning it.
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