Pre-mortem💀

Picture this:

A CEO calls her staff for an urgent last-minute meeting on the eve of the launch of a major iniciative.

As soon as everyone grabs a chair, she stands up and begins:

“I have bad news! The project has failed spectacularly. I want you to tell me what went wrong?”

“What!! But we haven’t even launched it yet!”

“That’s the point!”

In this example, the CEO is using an exercise in hindsight (in advance).

This technique was coined by Psychologist Gary Klein and is known as premortem.

We’ve heard about postmortem but premortem?

Postmortem is the process in which doctors intervene to examine the possible causes of a patient’s unexpected death so that they’re better prepared next time.

This same practice can and has been applied to a wide array areas such as business, relationships and so much more, and they take names such as; debriefing, exit interview, wrap up meeting, and more.

But the idea remains the same: You’re examining something in hindsight. After it happened.

On the contrary, in a premortem, we look to envision everything that could go wrong before we start.

Far too many people fail to have a backup plan because they think things will always go according to plan, even if destiny has tirlessly proven otherwise.

In some way, premortem is a kind of weaponized pessimism.

If the term positive pessimism sounds oxymoronic, you’re not wrong, but I truly believe it holds the escence of what premortem is.

We must be always prepared for disruption.

The fact that we don’t want it to happen has no significant effect on what destiny has in store for us.

When you’re prepared for tragedy, when you’re prepared for the worst case scenario, then whatever happens can only be positive.

This technique has been around for centuries, so much so that the Stoics had a name for it:

premeditatio malorum
(premeditation of evils)

Planning for the worst case scenario is a great way to analize and consider things you might’ve never considered before, thus making you better prepared for whatever is to come.

And if all else fails, if things do go sideways, then we should aim to learn something fromt he Stoics as well: manage expectations.

At the end of the day, everything can change, everything can happen, and most of it is outside our control.

The only thing we are in complete control is ourselves.

So next time, practice some premortem.

It’ll surprise you how usefull being a pessimist can sometimes be.