Run a pre-mortem before you start

Before a project begins, ask: assume it failed — what went wrong?

Why it works

The pre-mortem works by borrowing the imaginative clarity of hindsight before the project is complete. It tells people to assume failure has happened and work backward, which activates the same cognitive machinery that hindsight uses — but constructively, while there is still time to change the plan. It also gives permission to voice concerns that felt too pessimistic to raise during optimistic forward-planning.

How to do it

1. At the start of a significant project, call a brief session and say: "Assume it is one year from now and this project failed badly. What happened?"
2. Have each person write their failure story independently before sharing, so groupthink does not suppress minority views.
3. Collect the failure modes and check which ones the current plan addresses.
4. Assign someone to monitor the top two or three failure modes as the project proceeds.

Evidence

Research by Gary Klein formalized the pre-mortem. A study found that prospective hindsight — imagining an event has already occurred — increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes. Klein’s Harvard Business Review account gives the practitioner method its canonical form: convene the team, assume the project has already failed, and work backward to surface the failure modes optimism suppresses. (observational)

The effect on identifying risks is demonstrated; whether pre-mortems actually reduce failure rates in real projects is not well studied. It is a planning and communication tool, not a guarantee.

Sources

• Mitchell, Russo & Pennington (1989), "Back to the Future: Temporal Perspective in the Explanation of Events", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
• Mitchell, D. J., Russo, J. E., & Pennington, N. (1989). Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2(1), 25–38.
• Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review, 85(9), 18–19.

Common mistake

Turning the pre-mortem into an optimism exercise by framing it as "what challenges might we face?" rather than "we definitely failed — what happened?" The past-tense framing is the active ingredient.