The Pre-Mortem
Gary Klein's pre-mortem technique flips planning on its head. Instead of asking "how will we succeed?" you ask "it failed, why?" Teams that do this catch 30% more risks.
The best way to prevent a project from failing is to start by assuming it already has. Psychologist Gary Klein developed a technique for this: gather the team and say, "Imagine it's six months from now. This project has failed completely. Write down why."
This works because of a quirk in how we think. Prospective hindsight (imagining a future event has already occurred) increases our ability to identify reasons for outcomes by 30%, according to Mitchell, Russo, and Pennington's research on counterfactual thinking.
Standard planning asks "what could go wrong?" and teams give polite, surface-level answers. Nobody wants to be the pessimist. The pre-mortem removes that social barrier by making failure the premise, not the objection. Everyone has permission to be specific about weaknesses.
The hack: In your next project kickoff, replace "any concerns?" with "this project failed spectacularly. Take three minutes and write down the reason." Collect the responses anonymously. You'll surface risks that months of planning would miss.
