What went wrong review: Trying to be consistently less stupid.
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 5 mins
Summary: "It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” Charlie Munger.
I find a key way to ‘try and consistently be less stupid’ is to systematically do ‘What went wrong reviews’.
I try to do a ‘What went wrong review’ each week (of the week in general).
I try to do a ‘What went wrong review’ at the end of major projects.
By proactively looking for where things ‘went wrong’, I normally find more things than if you just do ‘a review’.
People often spend a lot of time reading each week, not so much time reviewing. Even less time reviewing what went wrong.
Jingle: To be more right, explain where you were wrong.
Levels of learning from the past
Levels:
L0: No review done.
L1: Just write a review.
L2: Write a review about 1. What went well + 2. What went wrong
Comment:
I find it’s so easy to under invest in learning about what went wrong. To be less wrong, try to not commit this wrong!
Or, it’s wrong to not explain where you were wrong!
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Details
Hindsight is 20/20. It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.
Levelling up comes in many forms, but perhaps the highest ROI is reviewing what you have just done and looking for things that went well, and especially looking for things that didn’t go well!
I find that generating insights from the recent past is way easier than trying to predict the future (generate insights for the future).
In investing, people often have something like a Decision Journal. I find that it’s harder to have ‘clean decision points’ in companies as you:
Normally don’t have a binary, one point in time, decide to invest or not decision;
But often instead have a series of decisions made with many people over months on a big project.
However, at the end of a project you can normally review everything and quite easily write down 1. What worked + 2. What didn’t work.
Also, doing a unit of reviewing what went wrong each week is often quite insightful and easy to do. It just often doesn't feel nice.
Quality of future decisions = 1. Insight about the future (planning what to do) + 2. Insight from the past (2.1 Learning what to do + 2.2 Learning what not to do)
"It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” Charlie Munger.
AKA there are mega wins from ‘2. Insight from the past (2.2 Learning what not to do)’ AKA a ‘What went wrong review’.
In my experience, people (myself included) tend to spend time in the following way:
Some reasons why this might be:
There is time pressure and you’ve just got to get on with things => ‘1. Insight about the future (planning what to do)’.
Looking at where things went wrong isn’t normally as fun as where they went well => ‘2. Insight from the past (2.1 Learning what to do)’.
I don’t care how I get better, just that I do.
“Progress solves all known problems.” Delivering the maximum net amount of progress for me is the goal.
An example
PSHE = Problem Solution How Execution
If something didn’t go as planned it normally happened in one area of this framework.
Let’s say you expected a feature to be a ‘L2: Dealmaker’ but it was received as a ‘L1: Nice to have’. Then something about how you view the world is off.
Likely your view of the problem space is ok as people still thought it was a ‘L1: Nice to have’, not ‘L0: Indifferent’.
But your understanding of the solution sets was off.
In this case I would try to build a new / updated framework through which to view the world to see if it explains the data point I’ve received and then use this framework to then help me make decisions in the future.
A framework for how a product is received might be = 1. Known problem * 2. Known solution * 3. Is there an existing product in market covering ‘1’ & ‘2’?
You might have built a great solution to a known problem, but it’s not known as a solution when people see it, they think ‘what’s that?’ vs ‘the help I’ve been wanting’.
This means that instead of the feature being a ‘L2: Dealmaker’, it’s a ‘L1: Nice to have’.
In the future perhaps build something that provides less of an improvement but is instantly recognised as the help someone needs. This could result in the feature being a dealmaker.
If you only take away on thing
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” Confucius
To me there is epic beauty in finding where you were wrong. Not just in the moment you figure it out, but also in all the bad you get to avoid in the future.
Oversimplification:
In secondary school: Finding where you were wrong = Bad, you lose a mark = See ugliness.
In white collar job: Finding where you were wrong = Good, you find a way to level up = See beauty.
Lean into finding where you were wrong, otherwise you’ll be leaning out of making progress.
Know what I think about spending time to find where you were wrong? It’s not bad ;P.
Also see: Post game analysis.