Coaching practices for Everyone Here is Succeeding Brilliantly at Exactly the Thing That Produces the Problem I'm Trying to Stop They're Hitting the Target and It's the Target Itself That's Wrong I Want to Change What We're Actually Optimizing for Not Keep Adding Rules People Just Game
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Everyone Here is Succeeding Brilliantly at Exactly the Thing That Produces the Problem I'm Trying to Stop They're Hitting the Target and It's the Target Itself That's Wrong I Want to Change What We're Actually Optimizing for Not Keep Adding Rules People Just Game, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Everyone here is succeeding brilliantly at exactly the thing that produces the problem I’m trying to stop
- My reflex is always "just try harder, add more, set a stricter target," and I keep doing it even though the same problem comes back every time
- I’ve been hyper-focused on hitting one number
- I’m chasing a dozen goals at once and none of them are moving, because I’m spread so thin nothing builds momentum
- I keep grinding to engineer the perfect outcome and getting nowhere, and it just occurred to me I’ve never once flipped it around and asked what would absolutely guarantee this blows up
Practices that may help
- Change what the system is optimizing for
If the goal of the system produces the behavior you want to change, change the goal.
Leverage Points - Resist the pull to optimize parameters when structure is the problem
Notice when you are adjusting numbers and ask whether the structure is the actual problem.
Leverage Points - Change the metric you’re optimizing
Shift which outcome you measure and the problem often dissolves or transforms entirely.
Problem Reframing: Solving the Right Problem First - Limit how many you run at once
Keep to a handful of Objectives so the framework concentrates effort instead of scattering it.
OKRs for People, Not Just Companies - Use inversion as the first model in every problem
Before solving a problem, ask what would guarantee failure — then avoid those things.
Mental Models: Charlie Munger’s Latticework Approach - State the goal, then invert it
Ask "what would guarantee I fail at this?" before asking how to succeed.
Inversion: Solve Problems Backward - Distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges
Separate problems you can solve with existing expertise from those requiring you to change.
Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical - Solve by subtraction
Ask what to remove before asking what to add.
Inversion: Solve Problems Backward - Set realistic goals and chip away at them — resist "crush it" culture
Aspirational goals that require heroic effort normalize crisis; realistic goals with steady progress normalize calm.
Designing a Calm Company (Fried & Hansson) - Align your strategy with your regulatory focus for "regulatory fit"
When your strategy matches your regulatory focus, the task feels more right and performance improves.
Regulatory Focus Theory: Promotion vs Prevention Thinking
Related concerns
- Optimizing The Wrong Thing
Shift which outcome you measure and the problem often dissolves or transforms entirely.
Change the metric you’re optimizing
- Goodhart Law Problem Solving
Shift which outcome you measure and the problem often dissolves or transforms entirely.
- How To Solve Problems Backward
Inversion is the mental model — popularized by Charlie Munger via the mathematician Carl Jacobi’s "invert, always invert" — of approaching a problem from its opposite end: instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure, then systematically avoid it. It is a reasoning heuristic, not a studied intervention, but it reliably surfaces risks and assumptions that forward thinking misses.
- How To Think In Reverse
Ask: what if the sequence were inverted, the roles were swapped, or the normal order were reversed?
Reverse and Rearrange
- Inversion Problem Solving
Inversion is the mental model — popularized by Charlie Munger via the mathematician Carl Jacobi’s "invert, always invert" — of approaching a problem from its opposite end: instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure, then systematically avoid it. It is a reasoning heuristic, not a studied intervention, but it reliably surfaces risks and assumptions that forward thinking misses.
- Inversion Solve Problems Backward After A Loss
Inversion is the mental model — popularized by Charlie Munger via the mathematician Carl Jacobi’s "invert, always invert" — of approaching a problem from its opposite end: instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure, then systematically avoid it. It is a reasoning heuristic, not a studied intervention, but it reliably surfaces risks and assumptions that forward thinking misses.
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