PreMortem Method of Risk Assessment
The PreMortem is a strategic foresight technique that tasks a team with imagining a future where their proposed plan has failed spectacularly. By working backward from this hypothetical failure, the group identifies hidden risks and vulnerabilities that are often overlooked during the optimistic planning phase.
When a few voices dominate or quieter people don't contribute
Your group discussions aren't balanced, you need better ways to include everyone, or conversations go in circles.
This framework is most effective before the final approval of a project, during the transition from planning to execution, or when a team is suffering from overconfidence or groupthink.
Plan Briefing
Imagining the Fiasco
Generating Reasons for Failure
Consolidating and Prioritizing Risks
Revising the Plan
Ensures every voice is heard and the group's collective intelligence is unlocked.
Facilitators can integrate this method as a 'de-biasing' exercise at the conclusion of a design phase. After a plan is presented, the facilitator leads the group through a structured brainstorming session where participants act as 'coroners' to diagnose the causes of the plan's hypothetical death, followed by a collaborative session to strengthen the original strategy.
- 1Use structured turn-taking to balance voices
- 2Start with individual reflection before group discussion
- 3Create safe spaces for minority opinions
- 4Summarize and synthesize regularly
- Strategic Planning
- Project Management
- Risk Mitigation
- Team Alignment
- Prospective Hindsight: Using the future to better understand the present.
- Psychological Safety: Creating a space where dissent and the identification of flaws are rewarded.
- Cognitive De-biasing: Actively countering optimism bias and the 'planning fallacy'.
- Collective Intelligence: Leveraging the diverse perspectives of the entire team to find blind spots.
- Requires a facilitator who can maintain a constructive tone to prevent the session from becoming overly negative.
- Participants must be encouraged to write down their ideas individually before sharing to avoid social loafing or influence from senior leaders.
- The method is only effective if the leadership is actually willing to modify the plan based on the findings.