write:”Gary Klein’s idea of the premortem usually evokes immediateenthusiasm. After I described it casually at a session in Davos someonebehind me muttered “It was worth coming t

my “adversarial collaborator” who generally defends intuitive decisionmaking against claims of bias and is typically hostile to algorithms. Helabels his proposal the premortem. The procedure is simple: when theorganization has almost come to an important decision but has not formallycommitted itself
Klein proposes gathering for a brief session a group ofindividuals who are knowledgeable about the decision. The premise of thesession is a short speech: “Imagine that we are a year into the future. Weimplemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster.Please take 5 to 10 minutes to write a brief history of that disaster.”Gary Klein’s idea of the premortem usually evokes immediateenthusiasm. After I described it casually at a session in Davos
someonebehind me muttered
“It was worth coming to Davos just for this!” (I laternoticed that the speaker was the CEO of a major internationalcorporation.) The premortem has two main advantages: it overcomes thegroupthink that affects many teams once a decision appears to have beenmade
and it unleashes the imagination of knowledgeable individuals in amuch-needed direction.As a team converges on a decision—and especially when the leadertips her hand—public doubts about the wisdom of the planned move aregradually suppressed and eventually come to be treated as evidence offlawed loyalty to the team and its leaders. The suppression of doubtcontributes to overconfidence in a group where only supporters of thedecision have a v filepos-id=filepos726557> nacea and does notprovide complete protection against nasty surprises
but it goes some waytoward reducing the damage of plans that are subject to the biases of WYSIATI and uncritical optimism.Speaking of Optimism“They have an illusion of control. They seriously underestimate theobstacles.”“They seem to suffer from an acute case of competitor neglect.”