Coaching practices for How to Find Risks in a Plan

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How to Find Risks in a Plan, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My plan feels solid until I notice it quietly depends on a whole stack of things just going my way
• When I ask myself "what could go wrong with this plan," I either draw a blank or come up with one vague worry
• I’m all-in on this plan and can barely make myself imagine it going wrong
• I’m excited about this plan and so committed to it that I can’t honestly see what might sink it
• We ran a real critique of the plan, found genuine holes, wrote them all down in a nice risk list

Practices that may help

1. Name the assumptions that must hold for the plan to work
   Every plan rests on assumptions — list them and ask how likely each one is.
   Margin of Safety
2. Run the basic pre-mortem
   Assume the plan failed, then have everyone write down why.
   The Pre-Mortem: Imagine It Already Failed
3. Run a pre-mortem from the outside-view perspective
   Imagine the project has failed — then ask which base-rate failure type caused it.
   The Outside View
4. Run a premortem before committing
   Imagine the decision has already failed — then ask why.
   Thinking in Bets
5. Require the plan to change, not just the risk register
   A red team exercise that doesn’t change the plan has accomplished nothing.
   Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail
6. Map and stress-test your key assumptions
   Before executing, list the assumptions the plan depends on — then ask which ones would kill it if wrong.
   Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail
7. Design decisions so they work even if some things go wrong
   Ask: does this plan require everything to go right? If so, redesign it.
   Margin of Safety
8. Stress-test your withdrawal plan against multiple scenarios
   Run your plan against the worst historical periods — not just the average — before retiring.
   The 4 Percent Rule, Made Practical
9. Run a pre-mortem before committing to a plan
   Imagine the plan has already failed and ask what went wrong.
   Confirmation Bias: Seeing What You Expect to See
10. The premortem (imagine the project already failed)
    Before starting, assume the plan has already failed and ask why — then fix it now.
    Premeditatio Malorum, in Depth

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