Map risks. The premortem workshop by Gary Klein

I can't recommend enough articles and research by Gary Klein. His book "Streetlights and Shadows" is one of the best books on decision making in uncertainty that I recommend my friends and clients to read. His PreMortem workshop is a powerful workshop format designed specifically to map risks. I share below a runsheet that I share with my colleagues and fellow facilitators. Please credit this as created by Gary Klein

This workshop is a method ideated by Gary Klein for identifying potential flaws and hidden risks in a plan before implementing it.

When to use a Pre Mortem? When there is a need for:

- using a critical mindset to unearth risks -especially at a project launch - by sidestep the social pressures to offering critiques: groupthink, positive bias, harmony, short timeframe, unwillingness to speak up

Benefits: make risks (including tail risks) more visible; critique the plan in order to improve it; increase its resilience; reduce overconfidence; make novel discoveries; increase team reflectiveness and improve its mental models.

Instructions

1.?????? Prepare: Get familiar with the plan. Create a shared understanding of what the plan is, the timeline, who is supposed to do what. Reserve 20 minutes for the Pre-Mortem of a plan (recommended by Klein). ?

2.?????? Imagine a fiasco Imagine that you are looking at an infallible crystal ball. And the crystal ball says that the plan has failed. This is different from asking “what could go wrong?” but starts from the certainty that the plan did go wrong. We know for sure that the plan has failed.

3.?????? Imagine reasons for failure ? Everybody has 2 minutes to brainstorm by themselves, in silence, all the possible reasons for failure. One idea for sticky note.

4.?????? Consolidate the list

Everybody reads out their sticky notes, which can be done in multiple ways: the team reads everything out in a round robin, one sticky note each, until they are out of stickies. For ease of reading, a summary of each point can be written out on a whiteboard/ flipchart. Once the list is final, an optional extra layer to sort through the reasons for failure: - Is this event a high-impact one? - Is it irreversible (vs reversible)? - Is it a high likelihood?

5.?????? What can I do to reduce the chances of fiasco?? We take another 2 minutes for each member of the team to brainstorm ways in which they can reduce the chances of fiasco, to strengthen the plan and make it more resilient.

6.?????? Revisit the plan

Make changes to the plan considering the conversation

Theoretical background: The Pre Mortem is based on literature on risk, black swan events, and on the social science of complacency. overconfidence in team settings. Especially at a project kick-off, it is normal for a team to suffer from overconfidence and have an optimistic bias. The workshop is designed to “liberate” creative dissent.