Run a pre-mortem to interrupt forward narrative construction
Before committing to a plan, imagine it failed completely — then generate the most plausible story of why.
Key takeaways
- What it is: Before committing to a plan, imagine it failed completely — then generate the most plausible story of why.
- Why it works: Pre-mortems work by inverting the narrative fallacy: instead of building a story of success after the fact, you deliberately construct a failure narrative before the fact. This interrupts the planning fallacy (which is itself narrative-driven — optimistic stories about future execution) and surfaces risks that the success narrative suppresses. Imagining the failure makes concrete the specific ways the plan could break.
- Evidence: Backed by observational / correlational evidence.
- Avoid: Running the pre-mortem as a formality and only generating failure stories that are already expected — the value comes from surfacing failures you weren’t considering.
Why it works
Pre-mortems work by inverting the narrative fallacy: instead of building a story of success after the fact, you deliberately construct a failure narrative before the fact. This interrupts the planning fallacy (which is itself narrative-driven — optimistic stories about future execution) and surfaces risks that the success narrative suppresses. Imagining the failure makes concrete the specific ways the plan could break.
How to do it
- 1After building a plan, tell your team or yourself: "Imagine it is one year from now and this plan failed completely. Write the story of why."
- 2List the specific failure modes that story reveals.
- 3Adjust the plan to address the most plausible and damaging failure modes before executing.
What the evidence says
ObservationalPre-mortem analysis was developed by Gary Klein and tested in forecasting contexts. Prospective hindsight (imagining a future as already happened) improves the identification of failure modes compared to direct risk listing.
- — Mitchell, Russo & Pennington (1989), back-to-the-future prospective hindsight study
- — Klein (2007), "Performing a Project Premortem," Harvard Business Review
Common mistake
Running the pre-mortem as a formality and only generating failure stories that are already expected — the value comes from surfacing failures you weren’t considering.
IX Coach runs a pre-mortem step during any significant planning session, asking you to construct the failure story before you commit resources.
Practice this with IX Coach →