Invert, always invert. This simple yet powerful phrase, often attributed to the 19th-century mathematician Carl Jacobi, is the key to unlocking a new perspective when tackling complex problems. When we get stuck, sometimes the most productive approach is to flip the problem on its head. Reverse brainstorming is a tool that helps us do exactly that.
Reverse Brainstorming with the Principle of Inversion
Reverse brainstorming leverages the principle of inversion by asking: what if we do the opposite of what we want to achieve? Instead of seeking ways to improve, we explore how to make things worse. Instead of asking how to attract customers, we ask how to repel them. This approach can be both surprising and insightful, helping uncover blind spots and hidden assumptions.
Here are some thought-provoking questions to start your reverse brainstorming from the perspective of customer experience:
- How can we make our customer experience less pleasurable for customers?
- How can we create a brand that people won’t care about, won’t join, and won’t buy from?
- How are we currently being unhelpful to our customers?
- How can we get in the way of our customers?
- How can we be a pain in the ass to our customers?
- How can we signal to our customers that we don’t care about them?
These questions are deliberately negative, and that’s what makes them effective. They help us see, often with startling clarity, what we might be doing wrong. From this inverted perspective, we can start to make sense of the habits, processes, or assumptions that are hurting our success.
The Value of Seeing the Opposite
By intentionally brainstorming on how to achieve the exact opposite of your desired outcome, you reveal insights that are usually overlooked when focusing only on what to do right. You might discover, for instance, that long wait times or overly complicated procedures are driving away customers. Or you might realize that your current messaging unintentionally conveys indifference.
When we invert the problem, it brings our attention to pain points that we’d otherwise gloss over. You end up seeing things you typically ignore. In a way, it forces you to consider worst-case scenarios so that you can address them proactively.
Moving Back to Positive Solutions
Once you’ve gathered a list of all the ways you could ruin your customer experience, it’s time to reverse the direction again. Take each negative insight and flip it around into a practical, positive action.
For example:
- If your inverted question led you to see that customers are frustrated by long response times, a natural action point is to streamline your customer support process and reduce those times.
- If you identified that your website’s navigation is confusing, the positive action would be to make it more intuitive and user-friendly.
Reverse brainstorming helps you see where friction exists, and flipping those insights gives you concrete areas to improve.
Bottom line: Give it a try. Next time you face a tough problem, try inverting it. Use reverse brainstorming to explore the worst possible outcomes, and let those insights guide you back to creating something incredible. Sometimes, to make things better, you have to start by imagining how you’d make them worse. And, remember; invert, always invert.
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