Munger’s Inversion
Munger’s inversion™ is a mental model Charlie Munger often summarised as:
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”
It popped up while listening to Barista to Billionaire (Andrew Wilkinson).
It’s about thinking backward instead of only forward. Rather than asking “How can I succeed?”, you ask “What would guarantee failure — and how do I avoid those things?”
The process involves identifying mistakes, pitfalls or failure points and then building systems that keep you from making predictable errors.
The premise is that we’re much better at spotting potential problems than crafting a perfect future. Another banger from Munger that speaks to this is:
“Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance”
This shouldn’t be confused with fixing what’s broken, which is preventative and reactive. Instead, inversion is about shaping your choices before the problems appear.
To give an example in context of running a design studio:
Common
“How do we make our studio thrive?”
Inversion
“How would we guarantee our studio fails?”
Examples:
Taking on any client, even if red flags. Underquoting to ‘win’ jobs. Overpromising and underdelivering. Not tracking cashflow. Not investing in marketing and referrals. Skipping service agreements.
By avoiding these you’re already ahead of a majority of the basic problems most fall for.
My personal take is that inversion is like an anti-romance lens that helps you stress-test the dream before falling for the trap and investing months or years into something.
