Picture this: It’s WWII. You’ve got a team of the best strategists around, tasked with solving critical problems and gaining the upper hand. The American B-25 and B-26 bombers are doing the bulk of the work, and your analysts notice something interesting. The planes that make it back are riddled with bullet holes in specific spots. It seems like a golden opportunity to reinforce those areas, right?

The military brass is all in – they see a way to make those planes tougher and get more bombing runs in. But there’s this one guy, a mathematician named Abraham Wald – a total brainiac who landed in the U.S. and found his way onto this strategy team – who flips the whole situation on its head.

Here’s his insight: They were only focusing on the planes that survived. He pointed out that the planes they needed to reinforce were the ones they weren’t seeing… the ones shot down because they were getting hit in the engines or cockpit. This strategic shift was a game-changer, they armored the vulnerable spots, and it’s a lesson still used in the Vietnam and Korean wars.

Businesses make the same mistake all the time. They focus on the wrong things – chasing sales goals instead of building a killer strategy, thinking marketing is the end-all-be-all, neglecting their teams, or assuming that innovation’s only for the tech giants.