Coaching practices for Success Scenario Planning

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Success Scenario Planning, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

• My plans hold up fine until something throws them off
• I’m all-in on this plan and can barely make myself imagine it going wrong
• I keep playing out this decision in my head as if there’s just one way it goes
• My worst-case is basically just the worst thing that’s ever happened before, and I keep assuming nothing can be worse than that
• I get swept up in how big the win could be and barely glance at what happens if it goes wrong

Practices that may help

1. Plan for obstacles with coping plans
   Anticipate the specific obstacles most likely to block your plan and pre-decide your response to each.
   Action Planning
2. 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
3. Enumerate scenarios and their probabilities before deciding
   Write down each meaningful outcome, assign a probability, and compute the weighted total.
   Expected Value Thinking: Deciding Under Uncertainty
4. Stress test plans against outcomes beyond the historical range
   Ask how your plan holds up if the worst outcome is twice as bad as any historically observed case.
   The Ludic Fallacy: When You Mistake Real Life for a Game
5. Protect the downside before chasing the upside
   Ask what the worst realistic outcome is and ensure you can survive it before evaluating the upside.
   Margin of Safety
6. Run the basic pre-mortem
   Assume the plan failed, then have everyone write down why.
   The Pre-Mortem: Imagine It Already Failed
7. Run a pre-mortem to interrupt forward narrative construction
   Before committing to a plan, imagine it failed completely — then generate the most plausible story of why.
   The Narrative Fallacy: Why We Can’t Stop Making Stories
8. Run a premortem before committing
   Imagine the project has already failed and work backwards to find why.
   The Planning Fallacy — Why Your Estimates Are Always Wrong
9. Audit plans for scenario inflation
   Before committing to a plan that depends on multiple things going right, count the dependencies.
   The Conjunction Fallacy — When "More Details" Feels More Likely
10. Map best case, worst case, and most likely case
    Write out all three scenarios to reanchor your thinking in the probable, not just the feared.
    Decatastrophizing, Made Practical

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