Most projects quietly fail. A late deadline here, an overbudget there, a feature no one uses. By the time you know something is broken, it’s too late to repair it without causing significant harm. We’ve all sat in a conference room, damage control in full effect, wondering how we didn’t see the signs. But suppose you could notice those warning signs before they happen. Suppose your team can notice the cracks in the foundation before you even start laying the bricks. That’s essentially what a pre-mortem does. It’s not pessimism or being negative. It’s being intelligent enough to think about failure when you can still avoid it.
What Makes This Different from Regular Planning
When most teams come to plan a project, they think about how things will work out. They chart timelines, delegate responsibilities, and establish milestones. People are all excited and hopeful. That’s fine, but it’s not enough. Classical planning expects things to happen as planned, which is usually not the case.
A pre-mortem turns that thinking around. Rather than saying “how will we succeed?” you say “how will we fail?” You get your team together and you say you want them to assume that the project has failed and burned six months down the line. You then go back from there. What failed? What did we get wrong? What assumptions proved to be incorrect?
This isn’t about the unnecessary indulgence of worst-case thinking. It’s about making room for unvarnished discussion before ego gets attached to the outcome and before dollars’ been spent. To be able to discuss risks openly with no worry about being a downer or criticising someone’s work when a project has yet to begin is absolutely critical.
The Right Time to Do This
Timing is critical here. Conduct a pre-mortem too early, and your plans are too indeterminate to properly analyse yet. Conduct it too late, and you’ve already expended resources and momentum down a path that may be flawed. That sweet spot occurs at the end of your planning stage, just prior to execution. You’ve had enough thinking to have a true strategy, but you haven’t committed to anything yet. You still have some latitude to make adjustments, think again, and add in safety nets.
This approach works especially well when the stakes are high. New product launches, major organisational changes, big client projects, or anything involving significant investment and risk. If failure would hurt, do a pre-mortem.
How to Actually Run One
Begin by rounding up a diverse team. You need folks from different levels, different functions, different frames of reference. The engineer is going to notice things the marketer won’t. The entry-level worker may see something the executive didn’t. Thought diversity is your policy of insurance here.
Once everyone’s there, set the exercise in motion. Inform them that it’s six months down the line and the project has totally failed. Not sort of failed or not done all that well, totally failed. Then inquire of them why. Allow everyone a few minutes to jot down their responses on their own before discussing it as a group. This avoids groupthink and ensures quieter voices are heard.
Gather all the explanations why individuals suggest they come up with. You’ll likely begin to notice patterns right away. Perhaps five people mention insufficient testing. Perhaps three point out ambiguous responsibilities. These patterns inform you of where your actual weaknesses lie.
Once everything’s on the table, rank them. You can’t solve every potential problem, so rank the risks as both likely and consequential. Then, for each high-level risk, determine what you can do immediately to avoid it or limit its harm. Revise your plan to include these measures.
Why Teams Resist This and Why They Shouldn’t
Other individuals hear “imagine we failed”, and it sounds defeatist to them. It particularly makes leaders uneasy because they’re supposed to radiate confidence and vision. Acknowledging possible failure seems to be inviting it in.
But that is the opposite way round. True confidence lies in preparation, not optimistic blinkers. The teams that are able to stare failure in the face and strategise around it are the teams that end up succeeding. The ones who act as if failure can’t happen are the ones who get caught out when something does go wrong.
There is also the blame culture. If your team works in a culture where calling out issues gets you stigmatised as negative or not a team player, a pre-mortem is not going to fly. Folks will remain silent to safeguard themselves. So before you even begin, have everyone understand that this is a safe space. No thought is dumb. No issue is insignificant. You’re not seeking someone to pin the blame on because nothing has really gone wrong yet.
What You Get Out of It
The most self-evident advantage is a stronger plan. You’ll pick up things you would have otherwise missed. You’ll build contingencies and backup plans. Your strategy is more resilient because it’s been tested under stress by your own people.
But there are richer payoffs as well. When a team comes through a pre-mortem together, they develop collective knowledge. Everyone has learned what can go wrong, so when something begins to go wrong during implementation, people pick it up sooner. They’re already sensitised to look out for those particular risks.
It also creates trust. When they see that their questions matter and influence the plan, they feel more committed. They’re not following orders anymore. They’re co-creators of a plan they helped make better.
And most importantly, perhaps, it eliminates panic when something does go wrong. Since you’ve already visualised failure and prepared for it, challenges don’t seem like disasters and instead feel like situations you’ve prepared for. Your team remains level-headed and follows the contingency plan rather than panicking or freezing.
Tools That Make It Easier
You don’t require sophisticated software to conduct a pre-mortem, but some simple frameworks can assist you in structuring it. A simple SWOT analysis enables you to think methodically about threats both within and outside your organisation. A risk register provides you with a space to write down every risk you come up with and where you’re resolving it.
Mind-mapping software is great for the brainstorming process, particularly if you’re doing it remotely. All the participants can pitch in to a common digital whiteboard, and visually sort out ideas based on themes that arise. It’s less about the tool than the attitude. The objective is to set up an orderly discussion where all voices are heard and all risk factors are weighed.
Making It Stick
A pre-mortem early on in a project is sufficient. To come back to it as events change is even better. Projects change as they progress. New data enters. Conditions change. A risk that appeared negligible in the early days could become severe after three months.
Incorporate checkpoints into your schedule where you review briefly your pre-mortem conclusions. Are the risks you previously identified still the most significant ones? Have new weaknesses arisen? Are your safeguards still applicable? This makes the pre-mortem a one-off exercise rather than a continuous practice of caution and responsiveness.
Also, establish a culture where individuals feel free to bring up new issues as they arise. The pre-mortem had allowed the door to honest discussion. Leave that door open for the remainder of the project. When someone states, “I’m concerned about X,” have them regard it as useful intelligence, not as negative.
The Real Power of Thinking Backwards
Essentially, a pre-mortem is an act of humility and prudence. It’s a recognition that we don’t know everything and that our plans, however well prepared, contain gaps. That isn’t a weakness. That’s intelligence.
The organisations and teams that succeed in the long term aren’t the ones that never encounter difficulties. They’re the ones who anticipate difficulties and have already determined how to go around them. They engineer for resilience, not merely for achievement.
So before you start your next great effort, sit down and pretend it has failed. Ask yourself and your team why. You may be astonished at what you find out. And when your project succeeds because you found those problems early, you’ll know the pre-mortem worked.
FAQs
1. How long should a pre-mortem meeting last?
Typically one to two hours, depending on the complexity of your project. Don’t do it too quickly, but don’t make it take forever either. You need enough time for meaningful discussion without exhausting people.
2. What if my team is too small to have diverging views?
Bring someone in from outside your immediate group. Invite a colleague in another department, a trusted advisor, or even a client. New eyes usually spot things you’ve all become too close to notice.
3. Can I do this on my own if I’m working solo?
Yes, but it’s tougher. Try putting your failure scenario and why in writing as if you were explaining it to somebody else. Or get a friend or mentor who will give you thirty minutes to discuss it. The outside view is what makes this succeed.
4. What if the pre-mortem shows too many issues?
That’s really a good thing, better to know than to have to figure it out later. You don’t need to fix everything at one time. Identify the three highest risks and tackle those first. The others you can watch or take in stride as part of doing business.
5. How do I get my staff to take this seriously and not just go through the motions?
Lead by example. Start by sharing a genuine concern of your own. When others see honesty from leadership about risks, they will follow. And don’t forget to use whatever emerges from the session. If individuals see their contribution influencing the plan, they will participate more thoroughly next time.
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