I saw an interview with Charlie Munger – a colleague of Warren Buffett – about his thinking process when evaluating companies in which Berkshire Hathaway might have an interest. He termed it “inverted thinking.”
He said that when he began training as a weather forecaster for the Army Air Corps in World War II, he practiced this strange approach to decision making. For example, he asked himself what would I do if, as a weather forecaster, I wanted to kill as many pilots as possible? Frightening, but just inverted thinking, so hear me out. “Maybe,” he said, “I’d purposely direct them to fly into dangerous storms with lots of thermal turbulence and lose control. Or I’d send them on long, circuitous routes to consume their fuel and cause them to crash with empty tanks. Maybe, I’d keep them uninformed about conditions they were going to face after takeoff and watch them blindly fly into danger.”
Charlie’s point was, once he had a list of these obviously dangerous situations, he’d do everything in his power NOT to create those conditions for his pilots.
Restated, Munger’s inverted thinking encourages a proactive approach to problem solving by focusing on avoiding failure rather than solely on achieving success. By considering the opposite of what you want, you can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved in achieving your objectives.
So let’s imagine a thought process about your store using Charlie’s inverted thinking.
What would you do if you wanted to kill the business of your store as quickly as possible?
Let’s fill the showcases with aged inventory that hundreds of customers have said “no” to. Let’s tell people that we believe a “unicorn” customer will show up any day now and buy it at full price because in 1974 a customer bought an old piece we had and that proves that it can happen. Let’s not reduce the number of items in the case that turn off a potential customer because of the fantasy we can’t let go of. We can’t seem to accept that a piece we liked and bought so long ago doesn’t seem to appeal to others.
Let’s ignore the stores dirty displays because we don’t really have the money to get new ones right now. It is a bit odd, however, lately we seem to be getting more price resistance and customers asking for discounts. Can it be the displays are diminishing the perceived value of the merchandise?
Let’s make our store harder to shop. If we have our sales staff and customer walk all around the store (twice!) when shopping, it means they will see everything, right? Let’s have our halo rings in 6 different cases which will make it very difficult for them to compare the selection and buy. We’ll make it a lot like those annoying websites where you can’t find what you want and just give up. Everyone loves a challenge.
Let’s not train our staff on every new line or product we buy for the cases. They’ll figure out what it is on their own. We can put off that product training session from the vendor for another month.
Let’s allow walk-in customers to have some alone time before we greet them. Anyway, I am kinda busy right now on this report my boss wants and they will wait.
The businesses Berkshire Hathaway owns, including their jewelry retailer firms, tend to be very successful, so someone, somewhere is doing something right.
Maybe you can be more successful too, if you spend time intentionally focusing on correcting what you DO NOT want in your store, fixing those things will leave you with a store full of what you do want.
Let me know if I can help you.
P.S. Now if I can just take my own advice and get my consulting business all polished up and sell it to Berkshire…
