Leadership · 20 min
Pre-Mortem: Imagining the Decision Failed
Before committing to a big decision, imagine it failed a year from now and list three primary causes.
Goal
Surface hidden weaknesses in a strategic plan before execution, defeating the optimism bias that grips excited teams.
Steps
- Gather decision-makers in a room (or video call) for max 20 minutes, no multitasking.
- Summarize the decision in one sentence ("We launch product X on September 1 with budget Y").
- Say seriously: "It's September 1 next year. The decision visibly failed. Each writes silently the three core failure causes — 5 minutes."
- Each reads their three causes aloud, no discussion yet. Capture every cause in a visible column.
- Dot-vote on the most likely causes (3 dots per person, 1 dot per cause).
- For the top three causes, assign each: an action owner, the first step, a review date.
- Don't cancel the decision. Revisit it after 24 hours with risk mitigations, then decide if it's still worth executing.
Which failure cause would never have been said openly in a normal meeting, but emerged thanks to the pre-mortem frame?