How to Improve Your Inversion Thinking Skills
From The Innovators Studio with Phil McKinney by Phil McKinney
June 3, 2026 · 16 min · Season 21 · Episode 7
About this episode
This episode explores inversion thinking as a method for improving decision-making by analyzing potential failures.
Every playbook, every case study, every innovation workshop is built on the same question: how do you succeed? You map the path forward. You model the upside. Nobody teaches you to ask the harder question. How would you guarantee this fails? That's inversion thinking. Charlie Munger called it one of the most useful tools he had, and he used it for sixty years. Most innovators know the quote. Almost none of them actually use it. By the end of this episode, you'll know why that gap exists, what it costs, and the exact steps to close it. If you want to try this on a real decision right away, I've built a free tool for it. Link below. I'll come back to it later in the episode. What Is Inversion Thinking? Inversion thinking is the practice of reasoning backward from failure. Instead of starting with "what does success look like and how do I get there," you start with "what would guarantee this fails" and design those conditions out of the plan. You'll also hear it called thinking backwards, and when it's aimed at a project before launch, a pre-mortem. Munger's rule was three words: invert, always invert. Or, in his blunter version, "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so…
People in this episode
Host: Phil McKinney
Topics covered
- inversion thinking
- innovation
- decision making
- failure analysis
- business strategy
Keywords
- inversion thinking
- failure
- success
- decision making
- innovation
- Charlie Munger
- business strategy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: HP
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