I always thought the key to success was creating a vision, setting goals, and working hard toward them every day. If I failed, I thought I did one of these steps wrong.
Today, I read a quote by Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman: “He shows another equally important path to success: thinking through what can go wrong no matter how smart and hardworking you are. Realising this, Munger continuously and methodically considers every way a plan could go wrong and plots out how to avoid each obstacle.”
“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backwards. What happens if all our plans go wrong? Where don’t we want to go, and how do you get there? Instead of looking for success, make a list of how to fail instead–through sloth, envy, resentment, self-pity, entitlement, all the mental habits of self-defeat. Avoid these qualities, and you will succeed. Tell me where I’m going to die so I don’t go there.” Munger says.
Munger’s approach tells me to avoid roadblocks and be more prepared when I inevitably encounter one. Furthermore, a growing body of academic studies on the topic backs up the idea of combining goal setting and obstacle avoidance. When people only ‘fantasise’ about the future, they take less action than they would if they also thought about what could go wrong and made plans to avoid it.
To summarise the key message, “Being both pessimistic and optimistic is better than just being optimistic. One of the best ways to win is not to lose.”
To apply this principle, test your plan with this three-step premortem process developed by Meathead Movers CEO and cofounder Aaron Steed:
1) List the ways the project could fail
2) Assign a probability to each possibility
3) Prioritize actions that can be taken to avoid failure
Rather than adding new procedures to help those projects succeed, he developed the pre-mortem process to remove the barriers preventing them from failing.