This is a post about thinking backwards.

I've been thinking about inversion a lot recently - as you do.

Inversion is a potent mental model you can use to improve your problem-solving and planning. It can help you identify and remove barriers to your success.

Most of us tend to think forwards about a problem. We start at the start and then go from there.

Inversion essentially flips the problem around, and we think backwards instead.

So, instead of thinking about what you do want to happen, think about what you don't want to happen.

Sounds a bit wonky, doesn’t it?

But, once you have a clear idea of what you don't want to happen, you can take the steps needed to mitigate those potential problems and in doing so, improve your chances of success.

There's as much to learn from identifying what doesn't work as from finding out what does.

Inversion is not about following good advice but rather about coming up with ‘anti-advice’. It teaches you what you should avoid.

It's brilliant in its simplicity and applicable to almost all walks of life.

But as this is a digital marketing blog, let's talk about how inversion can be useful with your marketing.

Let's put on our inversion hats (do you put them on upside-down?) to plan our next digital marketing campaigns!

Here are a few of the questions we could ask:

1. What could we do each day to get fewer sales and leads?

2. What could we do to alienate our target customer?

3. How could we make our company less creative?

4. What content could we create that's boring, corporate, and already been done a million times?

5. How about we just stop creating content?

6. What would happen if we didn't invest any time or money into our marketing?

7. What if we focused purely on short-term results, rather than mid to long term?

8. What if we didn't track what people were doing when they got to our website?

9. How can we take less responsibility for the actions of our business?

10. How could we kill our marketing?

You get the drift!

So, while most people are focused on how they can achieve success, we should also consider how we would manage failure.

What would things look like if it all went horribly wrong tomorrow? What does that tell us about how we should prepare today?

Once you’ve asked yourself your inverted questions and answered them, you simply don’t do those things.

If you don’t do the things that will almost guarantee failure, you stack the deck in favour of you moving successfully towards your goals.

Inversion can help to identify any negative behaviours, attitudes or habits that may be blocking success for your organisation.

This way of thinking, where you consider the opposite of what you want, is very powerful.

Inversion is a critical yet often unused skill that we can use to our advantage.

Thanks for reading.

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