Run a premortem before committing

Imagine the decision has already failed — then ask why.

Why it works

Prospective hindsight — imagining a future event as if it has already occurred — has been shown to generate more and higher-quality reasons for why it might fail than forward-looking risk identification. The mechanism is that imagining the failure as real removes the wishful-thinking filter that blocks identification of uncomfortable risks when the decision has not yet been made.

How to do it

1. After settling on a decision, say: "It is [time horizon] from now. This decision failed. Why?"
2. Spend 10 minutes writing every plausible reason for failure, however uncomfortable.
3. Identify which failure reasons are preventable now and which are inherent to the uncertainty.
4. Adjust the plan or confidence level based on what the premortem revealed.

Evidence

Klein (2007) introduced the premortem in a practitioner context; Mitchell et al. (1989) found that prospective hindsight — imagining an event as having already occurred — significantly increased the ability to identify reasons for outcomes. (observational)

Most premortem research is lab-based; field evidence on decision improvement from premortems in organizational settings is limited and mixed.

Sources

• Mitchell, Russo & Pennington (1989), Back to the Future: Temporal Perspective in the Explanation of Events, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Common mistake

Running the premortem and identifying failure reasons but then not doing anything about them — the exercise is only useful if it changes the plan or the confidence level.