Mental model · Deciding
Premortem
Premortem: Imagining a failure has already happened so the reasons become sayable. For each cause: prevent it, detect it early, or accept it.
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Imagining a failure has already happened so the reasons become sayable.
Try it now
Assume the plan you are committed to failed completely. Write the story of how, in sequence, with specifics.
What to do with the answer
For each cause: prevent it, detect it early, or accept it. Write what the earliest visible sign would be.
Where it misleads
It surfaces failures you can imagine. The ones you cannot are why the bad case still has to be survivable.
The module it belongs to
- Decision Thinking — Make better decisions under uncertainty
The book behind it
- Sources of power — Its big ideas, in our own words.