Coaching practices for We're Heading Into a Project Nobody Has Done Before but My Team is Treating it Like a Checklist Where Any Slip is Failure So They're Hiding the Dead Ends Instead of Telling Me What They're Finding Out
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For We're Heading Into a Project Nobody Has Done Before but My Team is Treating it Like a Checklist Where Any Slip is Failure So They're Hiding the Dead Ends Instead of Telling Me What They're Finding Out, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- We’re heading into a project nobody has done before, but my team is treating it like a checklist where any slip is failure
- 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.
- I’m about to commit to this timeline and on paper it all looks fine, but I have a nagging feeling I’m glossing over the ways it could go sideways because admitting them now feels like talking myself out of it before I’ve even started.
- We did the exercise where we imagined it failing and listed why, but I have a nagging sense the most likely way this actually goes wrong is something nobody was willing to say out loud in the room
- 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
Practices that may help
- Frame uncertain work as learning
Before starting a challenging project, name it explicitly as an experiment where mistakes generate information.
Psychological Safety in Teams - 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 - 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 - Combine the pre-mortem with red team pressure
Run a pre-mortem and then ask the red team to find the failure mode the team missed.
Red Teaming: Stress-Testing Plans Before They Fail - 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 - 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 pre-mortem from the outside-view perspective
Imagine the project has failed — then ask which base-rate failure type caused it.
The Outside View - 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 - Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem
Name the uncertainty and interdependence out loud so people expect to learn, not just deliver.
Psychological Safety, Made Practical
Related concerns
- How To Avoid Project Failure
Imagine the project has already failed and work backwards to find why.
Run a premortem before committing
- Premortem Mitigation
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.
- The Pre Mortem Imagine It Already Failed At Work
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.
- The Pre Mortem Imagine It Already Failed With My Team
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.
- 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 Hindsight Bias Pre Mortem Analysis
Before a project begins, ask: assume it failed — what went wrong?
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