Conducting Pre-Mortem Analysis

“Klein's recognition-primed decision model discovered that experts don't generate multiple options and evaluate them on standard dimensions. They use experience to size up situations very quickly and identify what is going on, what is likely to happen next, what can be accomplished, and what should be done. Then they evaluate through mental simulation: imagine doing the action in this context and see if it works. If it works, execute. If it almost works, improve it.”— Gary Klein

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Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making · Philosophy & Reasoning

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Mental simulation replaces option comparison for experts

“The PreMortem process: You have a plan, the team is ready to execute. Step back. Imagine looking into a crystal ball six months or a year in the future. You see disaster. The plan has completely and embarrassingly failed. People on the team don't make eye contact when they pass each other in the hall. Now, everybody take two minutes and write down all the reasons why this plan failed.”— Gary Klein

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Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Complete PreMortem protocol with specific steps

“At an Air Force software project kickoff, the contract monitor opposed doing a PreMortem, saying it would be too depressing and reduce confidence. Klein insisted. During the PreMortem, the most junior person, a captain specializing in information technology who hadn't spoken all meeting, revealed: The algorithms being described run on supercomputers and take a day or two.”— Gary Klein

p. 10

Strategy & Decision Making · Technology & Engineering · Leadership & Management

DUR_CONTEXTUAL

Junior captain saved project entire leadership missed

“ShadowBox training works by presenting a scenario, then stopping at decision points and asking the trainee to rank order options, goals, or information sources and write down rationale. Separately, three to five experts have already done the same exercise. After the trainee completes their ranking, they see what the experts ranked and more importantly, what the experts noticed in the same scenario.”— Gary Klein

p. 7

Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Training method reveals expert perception patterns

“Klein studied fighter pilots at Tyndall Air Force Base who were building Instructional System Design specs for flying tasks. Two F-106 pilots confessed: We have written all the specs, but we don't follow any of those rules. That is not the way we fly. When pressed to write down the rules they actually follow, they replied: We don't follow any rules, we just know what to do. This pattern repeated across firefighters and other experts. Expertise is not about incorporating rules.”— Gary Klein

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Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Expertise lives in tacit knowledge, not checklists

“A 1989 study on prospective hindsight found that giving people the perspective of a future situation where something counterfactual has occurred opens up access to kinds of thinking and speculation that people ordinarily wouldn't engage in. Klein's metaphor: during an eclipse, when the moon blocks out the sun, you see the corona and trails streaming out. It is gorgeous, but all invisible because the sun is so blinding under normal conditions.”— Gary Klein

p. 12

Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making

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Eclipse metaphor: block the obvious to see hidden

“Paul Johnson ran a PreMortem on a project launch with 27 people in the room. They wrote 27 things down on the first pass. Five of them were path critical. Of those five, Johnson as team leader had only thought of one. He was blown away. Five items they had already considered. Then five that were path critical, like the Air Force computer issue, that would kill the project. He hadn't thought of four as team leader, and they hadn't surfaced them in a very long planning process.”— Paul Johnson

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Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management

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27 people revealed 5 path-critical issues leader missed

“PreMortems fail when the leader doesn't have buy-in. Then the leader comes up with something trivial and everybody knows they have to not surface their prime concerns and choose something safer and minor. PreMortems also fail when the facilitator asks, What could go wrong with the plan? That is the wrong approach. That is typical critiquing. You cannot say what could go wrong. You say, I am looking at a crystal ball, the plan has failed, there is no doubt. That changes the mindset.”— Gary Klein

p. 11

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Wrong framing kills PreMortem effectiveness entirely

“Klein ran a study with seven four-person teams doing a garden path exercise where initial information misled them and subsequent cues indicated something else. None of the seven teams got off the garden path. The initial assumption held for the entire session. But each person kept a diary of what they were thinking. In every team, at least one or two people had noticed the anomalies and worried about them. The knowledge was in the team, in the subconscious of the team, but nobody said anything.”— Gary Klein

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Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management

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Knowledge exists in team but stays unspoken

“Klein compared PreMortems to other risk mitigation methods. Devil's advocates: only one study tried to evaluate their effect. It found devil's advocates were significantly worse than not using one. Reason: you don't know if the person is raising genuine concerns or just playing their role, so it is easy to discount them. Also, having a devil's advocate means you outsource criticism and don't have to be critical yourself.”— Gary Klein

p. 19

Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Devil's advocates make groups worse, not better

“Klein's company grew to 37 people and noticed some projects went well while others didn't. Postmortems after project completion helped future projects but didn't help the finished one. They moved the analysis forward to the kickoff meeting. The analogy: a medical postmortem benefits the physician and family but not the patient, because the patient is dead. A PreMortem anticipates what could happen at the project start, so the project itself benefits.”— Gary Klein

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Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution

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Move postmortem forward to save the project

“Two minutes for writing reasons is trial and error calibrated. One minute left people frustrated because they were still writing when time was called. Three minutes meant people finished early and were twiddling their thumbs, reducing room energy. Two minutes is the sweet spot. The project lead goes first because people don't know how candid to be and the leader sets the example. If the leader picks something frivolous or trivial, that tells people not to take it seriously.”— Gary Klein

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Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior

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Timing and sequence calibrated through trial and error