Invert, Always Invert

 Early on in my career, I had two choices regarding how to make decisions

• I could listen to what could go right.  I could listen to what I was supposed to do, and I could follow these suggestions.  I found this wasn’t a good idea.  It worked in 80% of the time, but that other 20% of the time resulting in mistakes.
• I could ask “what should I not do?”  I could learn the mistakes that had happened, understand the mistakes, and then make decisions on how to not repeat these failures.  I found the things to not repeat, not repeat the mistakes, and then get the job done.

My father always said that I focused too much on the negative.  No, I was trying to focus on what caused failure and then to not repeat those mistakes.  He always said I needed to focus on the positive.  As you can guess, he focused on the first item above and I focused on the second of the two items listed above.  My father was a sales guy.  I’m an engineer.  The two viewpoints are hopefully seen.  

With item #1, I would focus on the positives.  However, when something went wrong, I was powerless to fix what had gone wrong.  The problem is on how people evaluate you.  If you have a 20%:failure rate, you are labeled a failure.  The 80% of success is forgotten as the easy wins.  The 20% is seen as the default position of being a loser.

What happens if you do the second option?  You are looking to see what can go wrong and then not repeat those mistakes.  You are also prepared for those mistakes.  You can not repeat the mistakes of the past ecause you learned what not to do.  You learned how to fix those mistakes as well.  I’m a fan of listening to interviews on YouTube.  One of my favorite interviews are old interviews of Charlie Munger.  He called this system inversion, learn what not to do and don’t repeat those mistakes.  He said he learned this in the army.  He said he worked in flight scheduling in the US Army Air Force during WWII and learned what not to do.  Iirc, he was involved in scheduling flights in and around Alaska.  As you can imagine, the weather in Alaska can be rough.  He learned what weather conditions caused problems flying in Alaska and he wouldn’t clear flights under those conditions.  He said that flight issues dropped under him and that this is a lesson he took into business.

I remember the only major purchase I worked with my father on.  I actually dreaded going into it because I just knew our different viewpoints would cause problems.  I was shocked when he asked me what I saw as the downsides and told him and added in how we could manage those risks so that we could mitigate those risks.  We had other partners.  We presented this to them.  We all agreed we should go ahead.  It was shocking to me.  We didn’t get started on the project until after he died, but I was surprised how we did get thru it.

I like what Charlie Munger said when he discussed his decision making.  He said, “Invert, always invert.”