When we’ve put in effort to solve a problem, we want our solution, decision, or agreement to have every chance at long-run success. Here’s a powerful way to improve our plan’s ability to stand the test of time: Go back to the future and test it with a premortem.
In traditional problem-solving we learn to look ahead and consider the ramifications of our plan: What could go wrong? What will probably go right? How can we fail-proof the agreement or solution we’ve just worked so hard to craft?
Considering how our agreement will survive the future is just plain smart if our goal isn’t just agreement, but an agreement that really works over time. And here’s something else that’s smart: Future-proofing in a way that increases the chances we’ll do it well.
It’s called a premortem and it uses the idea of “prospective hindsight.”
The typical way to look ahead is to use foresight — to stay in the present and try to imagine what might go wrong down the road.
But if we tweak that approach and replace foresight with prospective hindsight, we get better results. The researchers whose work ultimately led to the idea of a premortem defined prospective hindsight this way:
“Prospective hindsight involves generating an explanation for a future event as if it had already happened; i.e., one goes forward in time, and then looks back.”
Instead of standing in the present and asking, What could go wrong? we mentally stand in the future and ask, What did go wrong?
Why does this work better? One reason may be the time shift in perspective. The cognitive “flip” from present-looking-forward to future-looking-back seems to help us more successfully identify places our agreement, decision, solution, or project could fail.
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, whose bestselling book Thinking Fast and Slow [amazon affiliate link] helped make the premortem idea well known, identifies two more reasons. It helps overcome the groupthink that can take over once a decision appears to have been made. And it helps prevent the suppression of doubt. Says Kahneman,
“As a team converges on a decision— and especially when the leader tips her hand— public doubts about the wisdom of the planned move are gradually suppressed and eventually come to be treated as evidence of flawed loyalty to the team and its leaders. The suppression of doubt contributes to overconfidence in a group where only supporters of the decision have a voice. The main virtue of the premortem is that it legitimizes doubts.”
Cognitive researcher Gary Klein, who coined the term premortem, says, “The premortem operates on the assumption that the ‘patient’ has died, and so asks what did go wrong.”
The general process is pretty straightforward:
A few important tips to keep in mind:
The car salesman has just returned and counsels you: " I am so sorry. My sales manager says no lower than $24,550, out the door, taxes, license and all. Period."...
By Max Factor IIICheck out Trial Lawyer's Dilemma: How Much to Ask for at the Palm Coast Injury Law Blog this week. As lawyer Phil Chanfrau observes: Knowing how much to ask the Jury...
By Victoria Pynchon“Won’t Someone Take Over for Me?” read a recent headline in the Business Section of The New York Times (01/05/2023). In the article, Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno relate the...
By Dr. Lynne C. Halem