Premortems work better than postmortems
Most strategic planning assumes things will go right.
That’s a dangerous assumption as, well, sometimes it goes wrong.
Last month I chaired a Transport Focus webinar on GBR and customer experience, and rather than ask the panel how to make it succeed, I asked them to imagine it was 2036 and GBR was a customer service disaster. How did we get there? What happened? Why?
The reason for doing this is because it’s far easier to get it right if we first imagine how it could go wrong.
The webinar was ‘crunchier’, more honest and (therefore) more actionable than any “how do we succeed” discussion I’ve ever been part of.
👉 Take a listen for yourself. I’ve put the webinar out as today’s podcast episode.
Take Action
If you’re a leader
Before your next major initiative kicks off, gather your team and ask them to imagine it’s already failed badly. Get them to state what went wrong, then make sure your deliver plan prevents those failures. This is called a Premortem and they’re well worth doing as standard.
If you’re a team member
When you’re next asked to contribute to a strategy or plan, propose a premortem session as the one of the working meetings. Make sure, though, that people understand it’s about risk identification not negativity.