The Premortem Technique

Abstract

Assumptions that do not associate with probabilities create a false sense of certainty. Working backward, considering alternatives that emerge from failed assumptions broadens the scope of scenarios examined. The Premortem technique raises awareness of possibilities, including their likely consequences, to enrich planning.

In a Word Assumptions that do not associate with probabilities create a false sense of certainty. Working backward, considering alternatives that emerge from failed assumptions broadens the scope of scenarios examined. The Premortem technique raises awareness of possibilities, including their likely consequences, to enrich planning.

Why History Repeats Itself

An autopsy—aka a postmortem examination—is a specialized surgical procedure conducted by a pathologist to thoroughly assess a corpse to determine or confirm the exact cause and circumstances of death or the character and extent of changes produced by disease.

Knowledge is what you harvest from experience—be that your own or someone else’s—through sense-making.¹ In sundry areas of human endeavor, it is common (but not common enough) to conduct the equivalent of a postmortem by means of formal completion or evaluation reports—after-action reviews, retrospects, and learning histories are rarer still—to try to understand why an initiative did or did not succeed. And so, except in learning organizations, lessons (to be) learned mostly eventuate in the form of hindsight—that, by and large, focusing on accountability, not learning—at the (wrong) end of a plan.² Paraphrasing Karl Marx , this is why history repeats itself; the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce.

You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.

—Yogi Berra

On Safe Silence, Bias , and Dissent

To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a postmortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.

—Ronald Fisher

When personal judgment is inoperative (or forbidden), men’s first concern is not how to choose, but how to justify their choice.

—Ayn Rand

Does the following development seem familiar? A proposal is drawn by a task force, endorsed by decision makers, approved by senior management, launched with fanfare, but leads nowhere. Why? There are two explanations. In bureaucratic organizations—and not only during planning but also across their operations—people are reluctant to express reservations about the workability of a plan: they keep mum because it can be dangerous to oppose what bosses—mark, not managers—command. Cognitive barriers play a role too: individuals and groups may be biased; when they have worked hard on a plan they can also become psychologically committed to the idea of success, be overconfident, and therefore blind to some of its risks. ( Bias³ is the inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of possibly equally valid alternatives. A related, prevalent phenomenon, groupthink, refers to the mode of thinking that happens when the desire for harmony in a decision-making group overrides a realistic appraisal of options.)

In the space of two days I had evolved two plans, wholly distinct, both of which were equally feasible. The point I am trying to bring out is that one does not plan and then try to make circumstances fit those plans. One tries to make plans fit the circumstances.

—George Patton

Analysis is an exercise in judgment under conditions of uncertainty, and the errors in judgment we make, singly or in groups, in a day or through life, are countless. In organizational settings, especially in complicated, complex, or, chaotic situations, a dependable measure might be—as Daniel Kahneman et al. intimate but do not underscore—to legitimize early dissent and quickly place creative, contrarian⁴ objections and suggestions on the table to reinforce the decision-making process and thereby improve a plan’s chances of success before it stalls, peters out, or backfires.

There’s No Risk of Accident for Someone Who Is Dead

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Enter, thanks to Klein (2007), the Premortem technique⁵: based on a process known as reframing,⁶ this risk-mitigation planning tool attempts to identify threats at the outset. Specifically, it helps challenge key assumptions, generate multiple hypotheses, discover unknown unknowns, track alternative future trajectories, and anticipate the unanticipated. For sure, by testing, probing, and even attacking individual and collective mindsets, greater rigor in critical thinking can reduce the chance of (unpleasant) surprises.

A premortem is the imaginary converse of an autopsy; the hindsight this intelligence assessment offers is prospective. In sum, tasking a team to imagine that its plan has already been implemented and failed miserably increases the ability of its members to correctly identify reasons for negative future outcomes. This is because taking a team out of the context of defending its plan and shielding it from flaws opens new perspectives from which the team can actively search for faults.⁷ Despite its original high level of confidence, a team can then candidly identify multiple explanations for failure, possibilities that were not mentioned let alone considered when the team initially proposed then developed the plan. The expected outcomes of such stress-testing are increased appreciation of the uncertainties inherent in any projection of the future and identification of markers that, if incorporated in the team’s design and monitoring framework and subsequently tracked, would give early warning that progress is not being achieved as expected.

The Premortem technique is low cost and high payoff. Its application is straightforward and need not take more than 1 or 2 hours, preferably with the help of a facilitator

• Settle on a period, in months or years, after which it might be known whether a plan was well formulated. Imagine the period has expired: the plan is a fiasco and has spawned dire consequences; what could have caused this?

• Request each team member to suggest 10 reasons for failure, particularly those that he or she would never bring up for fear of being impolite—sensitive issues might be divulged anonymously. Reasons can also be found in the external environment, not just the organizational context, organizational knowledge, and inter-and intra-organizational relationship to which priority attention is habitually given. Starting with the team leader, ask each team member to voice one reason from his or her list. Everyone should mention a reason in turn until all have been revealed and recorded.

• After the session is over, gather and prioritize the comprehensive list of reasons that grew out of collective knowledge.

• Look for ways to strengthen the plan by avoiding or mitigating essential drivers of failure, beginning with the two or three items deemed of greatest concern.

Some may worry the Premortem technique that could lead to situations where opposition so threatens a plan it must be abandoned. (The rejoinder to this is that a plan should indeed be ditched if the objections to it are that strong.) However, common sense suggests that a plan would be modified for the better, not abandoned, in most instances.

Fig. Conducting a premortem. Source Author