Just over a year ago, I watched a video on YouTube that provided me with a simple idea that changed my entire relationship with handling failure. It reframed the way I have approached valuable pursuits and meaningful projects, saving me from a lot of potential mistakes, traps and failures, well ahead of time. I still fail and I still make mistakes, but my ability to avoid these has drastically increased.
The idea is this:
Contemplate the failures of a pursuit ahead of time instead of after they have already happened. Instead of only learning from your mistakes, prevent many of them from happening in the first place.
This foresight will allow you to anticipate and prevent failure well before it looms over you. Just implementing this one simple idea alongside your different goals and paths will completely change your life over the long-term.
Let’s unpack it further!
The Pre-Mortem Technique
The idea above is contained within a well named system called the pre-mortem technique.
This technique was first developed in the late 1980s by Gary Klein, a cognitive psychologist, as a way to enhance decision-making and problem-solving processes in high-stakes environments, particularly in fields like healthcare and aviation. The idea behind the pre-mortem was simple: instead of analysing why something went wrong after it’s already happened (a post-mortem), why not think about potential causes for failure before it occurs? By considering failure ahead of time, you can develop strategies to prevent it from happening.
Klein’s research showed that people are typically better at predicting failure when they look at a project from the perspective of “if it fails, why did it happen?” This approach allows for a more objective, critical, and creative analysis of the risks involved. The pre-mortem technique has since been adopted in various industries and has proven effective in reducing mistakes and improving outcomes.
The basic steps of the technique:
- Pick an important project or pursuit in your life.
- Imagine that the project has failed completely.
- Contemplate all the possible causes for this failure, both major and minor.
- Rank the causes, from most likely to least likely.
- Come up with 2-5 solutions that would prevent each failure.
A Detailed Breakdown Of Implementation
1. Pick an important project or pursuit in your life
The first step in using the Pre-Mortem technique involves selecting an important project or goal that you are deeply invested in. This could be anything from a career goal, a personal project, a business venture, resolutions, new hobby, spiritual awakening, life purpose, your entire life, or even a relationship.
It’s important that this project or pursuit is something that carries significant value or impact for you. The reason for choosing an important project is that the Pre-Mortem technique is most effective when applied to high-stakes endeavours, where failure can have serious and more meaningful consequences.
It’s the highest value projects that demand the most strategic preparation.
2. Imagine that the project has failed completely
After selecting your project, the next step is to envision that the project has failed entirely. This is a critical part of the Pre-Mortem process because it helps you to shift your perspective and think beyond the hopeful or idealistic aspects of the project. It forces you to confront the worst-case scenario — failure — not as a distant possibility, but as a present reality. By imagining that the project has already failed, you allow yourself to take a step back from the emotional investment and look at the project from a more objective and analytical angle.
This mindset change can help you identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities that may not be immediately obvious during the planning phase. The goal here isn’t to dwell on the failure itself, but rather to use it as a tool to anticipate problems before they arise, helping you prepare and mitigate those risks ahead of time.
3. Contemplate all the possible causes for this failure, both major and minor
Once you’ve accepted the hypothetical failure of your project, it’s time to critically examine the potential reasons for that failure. This step involves brainstorming and considering every possible cause that could have contributed to the downfall of your project. It’s important to cast a wide net during this phase — don’t limit yourself to the obvious or the most likely scenarios, but instead allow yourself to explore every angle.
The more detailed and comprehensive your analysis is, the more likely you are to uncover hidden risks that you might not have otherwise considered. Both major and minor causes need to be evaluated because even seemingly small oversights can escalate into bigger problems over time if left unchecked. Causes should also include external events as well as internal dynamics such as your fears, limiting beliefs and other potentially detrimental character traits such as laziness, complacency or arrogance. The things we pursue often fail, not because of any big external force, but rather due to some limitation within our own being. So be vigilant.
4. Rank the causes, from most likely to least likely
Once you’ve identified all of the potential causes of failure, the next step is to rank them in terms of probability. Not all causes are equally likely to occur, so it’s important to prioritise them. Some failures may be highly probable, given the nature of the project or past experiences, while others might be highly unlikely but still worth considering due to their potential impact. For example, if you are working on a personal fitness goal, the most likely causes for failure might be a lack of consistency, time management issues, or unhealthy habits. However, the least likely causes could include an injury or an unexpected health crisis. By ranking the causes from most likely to least likely, you create a clear roadmap for where to focus your efforts. This helps ensure that you are addressing the most significant risks first, while not completely disregarding the less likely but still possible threats.
5. Come up with 2-5 solutions that would prevent each failure
The final step in the Pre-Mortem technique is to develop proactive solutions for each potential cause of failure. For each of the failure scenarios you’ve identified, you should brainstorm at least 2-5 possible solutions or preventative measures. This phase is all about being creative and thinking through different ways to circumvent or minimise the impact of these risks. For instance, if one of the most likely causes of failure is poor time management, your solutions could include setting clearer priorities, using productivity tools, or scheduling regular check-ins to stay on track. If a potential risk is financial mismanagement, you might consider setting a more detailed budget, seeking expert financial advice, or securing backup funding.
The goal here is not to come up with a single solution but to have several options to choose from, depending on how the situation develops. These solutions should be practical and specific, with clear steps on how to implement them, ensuring that you’re prepared to tackle any challenges that arise along the way.
Spend time on this step contemplating as many creative solutions as possible!
Some Extra Points To Consider
In the previous blog, I chatted about ways to turn abstract goals into concrete action steps which mainly focused on the lens of finding tangible action items based on all the obstacles to your goal whereas the above method uses occurrences of failure to generate action items. This gives you two powerful perspectives to use to generate ways to move towards your vision.
You can definitely complete both of these when pursuing a specific goal and they can synergise and merge in certain ways to give you an extremely powerful set of actions items to concentrate on to heighten your chances of executing projects flawlessly, surmounting obstacles and avoiding the traps of failure. You now have an extra tool in your belt that you can pull out before you decide to pursue any new path.
My challenge to you is as follows:
This week, pick one major project in your life, or one major goal that you are pursuing and do a Pre-Mortem on it. Once you have completed it and generated your list of action items, pick one action item that you can start implementing immediately and set aside a few hours in the next week to begin building momentum!
Good luck!
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