Do premortems. A postmortem is too late.
Gary Klein introduced the idea of premortems. A premortem is reverse positive thinking. Instead of imagining success, imagine failure.
What might go wrong:
A year from now, imagine your project is a colossal failure. What contributed to imagined failure? What did you fail to do?
Scenarios:
Your business is becoming more profitable. A year from now, your business is failing. What did you fail to do that caused the failure? How might you prevent future failure?
You’re ready to launch a new initiative. A year from now, this initiative crashes. What went wrong? What process or system will make success more likely?
You’ve made progress at overcoming ineffective leadership behaviors. A year from now, you’ve slipped back into ineffective behaviors. What are some possible reasons you slipped back?
Get real:
Prepare for negative outcomes that are likely.
You might say, this project will fail because the earth is hit by a meteor. You don’t need to prepare for that contingency.
Example: check-in initiative
You schedule check-in meetings with team members. Imagine your check-in initiative is a complete failure. What went wrong?
- You stopped listening and started thinking you had all the answers.
- The conversations turned into gripe sessions.
- Actions were planned, but there was no follow through.
- You canceled check-ins because of busyness.
Which of the above negative outcomes is most likely?
How will you prevent a negative outcome?
How might a premortem be useful?
What might go wrong during a premortem meeting? (This is a premortem on premortems.)
