Coaching practices for We're About to Kick This Off and Everyone's Upbeat but I Have a Quiet Feeling There Are Ways This Falls Apart That Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud While We're All Still Excited
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For We're About to Kick This Off and Everyone's Upbeat but I Have a Quiet Feeling There Are Ways This Falls Apart That Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud While We're All Still Excited, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- We’re about to kick this off and everyone’s upbeat, but I have a quiet feeling there are ways this falls apart that nobody wants to say out loud while we’re all still excited.
- Whenever my team sits down to spot risks, the most senior or loudest person says the first thing and suddenly everyone’s nodding along to the same two concerns
- We’re about to kick off something new and everyone has private hunches about what it’ll take to pull off
- We’ve all fallen in love with this plan and the room’s gone warm and agreeable, and now it feels almost rude to be the one raising what could go wrong
- I’m about to commit real time and money to this plan, and it looks solid
Practices that may help
- Run a pre-mortem before you start
Before a project begins, ask: assume it failed — what went wrong?
Hindsight Bias: Why Everything Seems Obvious in Retrospect - Write reasons independently before discussing
Everyone records failure causes alone first, so the room doesn’t converge too soon.
The Pre-Mortem: Imagine It Already Failed - Use feedforward to align team members on goals before projects begin
At the start of a project, invite feedforward on how to succeed — before any performance to critique.
Feedforward: Future-Focused Feedback That Actually Changes Behavior - Black hat: identify risks and why something could fail
Apply the most rigorous critical scrutiny to the idea — the black hat is the voice of caution and evidence-based pessimism.
Six Thinking Hats, Made Practical - 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 - 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 - 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 - Adjourning: close the team with intention
How a team ends shapes how each member begins the next one.
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development - Run a premortem before committing
Imagine the decision has already failed — then ask why.
Thinking in Bets - Choose the right time to begin
A difficult conversation started at the wrong moment fails before it starts.
The Soft Startup: How You Begin a Difficult Conversation Determines How It Ends
Related concerns
- When Feedforward Feedforward For Goal Alignment
Before a project begins, ask: assume it failed — what went wrong?
Run a pre-mortem before you start
- When Psychological Safety Teams Framing Work As Learning
Before starting a challenging project, name it explicitly as an experiment where mistakes generate information.
Frame uncertain work as learning
- When Six Thinking Hats Black Hat Caution
Apply the most rigorous critical scrutiny to the idea — the black hat is the voice of caution and evidence-based pessimism.
Black hat: identify risks and why something could fail
- How To Anticipate Problems
Before starting, assume the plan has already failed and ask why — then fix it now.
The premortem (imagine the project already failed)
- How To Avoid Project Failure
Imagine the project has already failed and work backwards to find why.
Run a premortem before committing
- Imagine Project Failed
A pre-mortem, developed by psychologist Gary Klein, has a team imagine that a plan has already failed and then work backward to explain why — before any work begins. The technique exploits "prospective hindsight": research found that imagining an outcome as a certainty makes people generate more, and more specific, reasons for it, surfacing risks that ordinary risk assessment misses.
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