D·03
Decisions & Judgment
The Pre-Mortem
Before committing, assume it is eighteen months later and the project has failed. Write the story of why.
- Evidence
- solid
- Topic
- Decisions
- Things to do
- 3
- Read
- 1 min
solidHow strong is the evidence?
Good evidence behind it, but fewer people have checked it independently.
- Gary Klein, HBR, 2007
- prospective hindsight, Mitchell, Russo & Pennington, 1989 — 30% more reasons identified
Why it works
Asking “what could go wrong” invites loyalty; asserting that it went wrong makes the mind produce causes instead of defending the plan.
What to do about it
- Phrase it as fact: “It failed. Completely. Why?” — never as a possibility.
- Everyone writes privately for five minutes before anyone speaks, or the first speaker sets the frame.
- Take the top two causes and put a named owner and a mitigation against each. Otherwise it was therapy.
Where people go wrong
Running it after the decision is emotionally locked in. Then it produces a list nobody acts on.
Read next
- The Planning FallacyYour estimate of how long this will take is an estimate of the best case, and you know it is not the best case.proven
- Start From the Base RateAsk what usually happens to cases like this one before you consider what is special about this one.proven
- Sunk Costs Are Not CostsMoney and years already spent are gone whatever you now decide. The only question is forward value.proven
- Whether-Or-Not Is Not a DecisionA choice framed as one option with a yes/no is the worst-performing shape a decision can take.solid