Beyond Pros and Cons Using a Pre Mortem to De Risk Your Next Big Move

Every major business decision is preceded by a familiar ritual: the creation of a pros and cons list. We meticulously weigh the potential upsides against the foreseeable downsides, convinced that this balanced approach will lead us to a rational choice. But this method has a fundamental, often invisible, flaw. It is a product of optimism.

When we are invested in a project, we are naturally biased towards its success. Our "pros" are expansive and imaginative, while our "cons" are often conservative and constrained. We suffer from a collective failure of imagination when it comes to envisioning what could go wrong. This is why so many well-laid plans crumble upon first contact with reality.

We need a tool that forces us to confront the possibility of failure with the same rigour we apply to planning for success. That tool is the pre-mortem.

Developed by psychologist Gary Klein, the pre-mortem is a brilliantly counter-intuitive exercise. While a post-mortem analyses a failure after it has happened, a pre-mortem imagines that failure before you even start. It's a form of prospective hindsight that systematically de-risks a project by making it safe to think about the unthinkable.

How to Run a Pre-Mortem

The process is simple but profound. Before giving the final green light to a major initiative, gather your project team and say the following:

"The project is complete. We look back on it, and it was a complete and utter disaster. It failed spectacularly. For the next ten minutes, I want each of you to write down every single reason you can think of for why it failed."

This simple prompt changes everything. It shatters the constraints of optimism and groupthink. Instead of being asked to poke holes in a plan their leaders are championing, the team is given explicit permission to use their knowledge and experience to foresee problems. It liberates the quiet sceptics and harnesses the collective intelligence of the entire group.

After the individual brainstorming, you go around the room, asking each person to share one reason for the failure from their list. You continue this process until every potential cause has been identified and recorded on a whiteboard.

Why the Pre-Mortem is So Effective

This technique is more than just a creative brainstorming exercise; it's a powerful tool for overcoming the cognitive biases that plague executive decision-making.

1. It Neutralises the Overconfidence Blind Spot: Even the most humble leader can fall victim to the overconfidence blind spot. The pre-mortem forces you to confront the very real possibility of failure, grounding your strategy in a more realistic assessment of the risks.
3. It Surfaces Hidden Risks: Traditional risk analysis often identifies generic, external threats. The pre-mortem, however, uncovers the specific, internal vulnerabilities that are far more likely to derail a project: a key team member burning out, a critical inter-departmental dependency being overlooked, a flawed assumption in the initial data.
5. It Creates Psychological Safety: It is often career-limiting for a junior team member to say, "I don't think this plan will work." But it is insightful and valuable for that same person to say, in the context of a pre-mortem, "One reason this project might have failed is because we didn't account for X." It reframes dissent as a creative contribution.
7. It Turns Vague Worries into Actionable Plans: Once the list of potential failure points is generated, the team can then work to strengthen the plan. For each significant risk identified, you can ask: "How can we mitigate this?" or "What's our contingency plan if this happens?" The pre-mortem doesn't just identify risks; it turns them into a proactive to-do list.

While a Red Team provides an external challenge to your strategy, the pre-mortem allows you to harness the internal expertise of the people closest to the project. It is one of the most effective, low-cost, high-impact tools a leader can use to de-risk a decision.

Before you sign off on your next big move, take an hour. Imagine it has failed. You may be surprised to find that this brief journey into a hypothetical disaster is the very thing that ensures your success.

Want to build more robust decision-making processes in your organisation? Scott Walker can guide your team through powerful frameworks like the pre-mortem in a hands-on workshop. Contact us to learn more.