In October 2019, my boss and I were preparing a customer presentation for a business trip to Perth and Kalgoorlie, Australia.
We had plenty of ideas for making the presentation better. More customer-specific detail. Better slides. Stronger data. Better examples. More preparation for questions.
Our VP of Sales gave us a different way to approach it.
Instead of asking what would make the presentation successful, start with this:
What would make the presentation fail miserably?
That question is much easier to answer:
Go in without understanding what the customer cares about. Have no clear point. Put too much information on the slides. Get caught by obvious questions we should have prepared for.
Then take the list and do the opposite.
I have used the same exercise many times since. Also for building Wellhana.
Invert, always invert
The German mathematician Carl Jacobi was known for the advice, “Invert, always invert.” Charlie Munger later made the idea famous in investing, business, and life.
I love inversion because asking what creates success can produce a lot of reasonable answers. It can be hard to know which ones truly matter, which are smaller improvements, and where to put your attention first.
Ask what would make something go badly and the biggest problems are often much easier to see.
We are remarkably good at spotting what could go wrong. Inversion puts that ability to work.
Try it with money
Ask: What would make building wealth extremely difficult?
Spend every increase in income. Carry expensive debt for years. Build fixed monthly expenses right up to what you earn. Keep no cash for inevitable surprises. Take risks large enough to wipe out years of progress. Never invest consistently.
Easy. Now take each item and do the exact opposite.
For HR, that is a useful way to think about employee money support too. There are hundreds of things employees can learn about money, but avoiding the few patterns most likely to wreck their progress does a lot of the work.
Best, Henry
Founder, Wellhana