The Premortem

“The premortem is a great idea. I mentioned it at Davos and the chairman of a large corporation said it was worth coming to Davos for. The beauty of the premortem is that it is very easy to do. My guess is that, in general, doing a premortem on a plan that is about to be adopted won’t cause it to be abandoned. But it will probably be tweaked in ways that everybody will recognize as beneficial. So the premortem is a low-cost, high-payoff kind of thing.”

—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate and a professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

Why a premortem?

The premise of a premortem is simple.  Those considering adopting a new initiative—say, a strategic plan, a new compensation system, a technique for measuring profitability or streamlining workflow—are asked to imagine themselves a year hence when the initiative has failed miserably.  Everyone is invited to take a few minutes writing down the reasons it failed.

The rationale is to change the dynamic from trying to avoid any issue that might disrupt harmonious agreement on the initiative to challenging people to show they’re smart by surfacing potential problems.

Of course, an immediate beneficial consequence is to invite adjustments or fine-tuning to the initiative that will help increase its odds of success.  As importantly, people are alerted to potential difficulties going forward and rather than being defensive or in denial about those obstacles, they can address them actively and creatively, recognizing that “this is a possibility we foresaw and discussed” [so we were right all along].

The goal is not to suffocate the project in its cradle—unless that appears the only rational outcome given all the hurdles which may be identified—but instead to improve the odds of its success by anticipating blockages and obstacles and creating ways to head them off or work around them.

How does it work?

Premortems should involve everyone on the project team, and begin with a joint exercise.  If done thoroughly, this all-hands meeting could last two hours or more.

Step 1: Identifying problems

At the outset, everyone is told that one year after launch the project has failed utterly.  Each person is then given a few minutes to write down their thoughts on why, in “hindsight,” the project failed and what went wrong.  Reasons for failure can be extremely varied, and might include, for example:

• External changes in the market, such as
  • the behavior of competitors,
  • the preferences of clients,
  • economic developments such as recessions,
  • technology,
  • new entrants into the market,
  • regulatory changes, or
  • shifts in the attractiveness/unattractiveness of particular practices areas.
• Internal, firm-specific developments, such as
  • New leadership,
  • Arrival or departure of key talent or players
  • Winning or losing critical clients
  • Simple lack of focus or follow-through on executing the project
    • Why?
  • Changing opinions on the firm’s desired focus and direction.
  • Inadequate support from business professionals and the C-suite

Once people have finished listing their reasons, a leader goes around the room asking each person to describe one reason for failure, lists them on a whiteboard, and continues until everyone has exhausted their list.

This has been described as “a brainstorming session of doom,” and no idea is off-limits:

• What if a new technology makes the entire concept obsolete?
• What if our #1 champion leaves the firm?
• What if partners go into passive-resistance mode and simply refuse to devote the time/money/effort to it that it takes?
• What if business staff revolt?
• What if it turns out to require technology that doesn’t exist in practical form?
• What if clients tell us they don’t want it?
• What if an earthquake or hurricane destroys our main office? (Seriously; all ideas are fair game at this point.)

The only topic that is not permitted during this phase is for people to suggest proposed solutions to any of the obstacles, because that immediately alters everyone’s focus.  This can be more tempting for people than you might assume, but with disciplined moderation and guidance it can be avoided.

Step 2: Prioritizing

At this point you should have a long list of potential problems, so now the time is to prioritize them.  Here are the selection criteria for narrowing down the list to a size the group can deal with effectively:

• Eliminate the most far-fetched, unlikely, and improbable. Focus on developments that might actually    We want to have the list be primarily composed of those “elephant in the room” issues that are deemed impermissible to talk about, but which we have to bring to the forefront and address for the benefit of the project.
• Eliminate eventualities you have no control over. It’s useless to spend an iota of time or effort on them because there’s nothing to be done.  Out goes the hurricane or earthquake.
• Focus on the most consequential possibilities: Drop anything that would have only a minor or tangential impact. You want to get down the existential threats to the project.

Step 3:  Problem-solving

Finally comes the step that everyone has probably been eagerly awaiting—and which, perhaps oddly, can be the easiest now that all the problems, including the “unspeakable” ones, have been written down for all to see.  Propose solutions.

By and large, the potentially show-stopping problems remaining will either be problems that exist and need to be addressed today (partners aren’t buying into the project itself, for example) or problems that might arise down the road but aren’t yet a live issue (a key champion leaves).

For the first group of here-and-now problems, your mission at this point is clear: Get to work solving it.  This means assigning specific, named individuals to clearly defined action items, giving them a deadline to do what they’re being asked to do, and following up with rigor on a publicly available time-line.  It won’t be a solution unless someone makes it happen before it can kick in, with bad consequences.

For the second group of “maybe but not right now” problems, by definition there’s nothing you can do immediately because the problem isn’t a live present issue.   What you can do is create a potential, viable, plan to address the issue should it arise.  For example, if the problem is “our key champion leaves the firm”—but he/she is still firmly on-board—your “Plan B” if that happens might be to have a second individual just as passionate about the project as the first lined up and fully engaged.

Summary

Nothing can guarantee the success of a major new initiative.  The world is changeable and the future unforeseeable in important ways.  Not only that, but the players involved—your partners, your clients, your competitors—have free will and can change their behavior in light of the initiative itself.  How they’re behaving today (a competitor is refusing to adopt project management tools) can be different tomorrow (seeing your firm invest in project management, they decide they better face the music and they do so as well).

The best you can do is to:

• Show clarity and candor about the most serious obstacles that could derail the project;
• Firmly address those you need to address today and figure out how to address others that might arise in the future;
• And hold team members strictly accountable for what you’ve all agreed to do.

Note to our readers:
Our experience In our work with clients at Adam Smith, Esq., is that the premortem is one of the most effective, and economical, techniques we’ve come across to help give your new project the fighting chance it deserves.