The Premortem

My wife will soon be a happy woman. It has nothing to do with my life insurance policy. I am absolutely confident that Deb wishes only well for me. Generally.

For the last two weeks, I have found it impossible to let her accomplish her nightly classroom chores at the dining room table without "Deb, you've got to listen to this," as I excitedly blurt out a passage from the book that I am (gratefully from her perspective) almost done with.

I highly recommend that every person who would presume to lead buy a copy of Thinking, Fast and Slow, by winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Daniel Kahneman. A syntheis of his forty-year opus of research on decision making, the thesis of Kahneman's book is that we  possess two systems.

System 1 is fast, from the gut, a real shoot-first, ask-questions-second actor. System 2 is slow and deliberate, systemic and analytical, ostensibly rational. How we make decisions, good and bad, is a function of both systems.

I am confident that the book is so replete with things leaders need to know and be able to do that I am committed to sharing ideas from it for the next several weeks. Here is the first idea.

Behavioral economics research suggests that, at the outset of new initiatives, entrepreneurial teams and organizations are prone to a bias that Kahneman terms “the illusion of control.” Its attendant elements include “competitor neglect” and “overconfidence,” both of which are a function of the optimistic temperament, an adaptation needed to persist in the face of obstacles.  

Research: Only 35% of small businesses survive the first five years of opening. A survey of American business founders, however, revealed that the average estimate of the chances of success for “any business like yours” was 60%--almost double the true value.

The bias was more profound when people assessed the odds of their own venture. Eighty-one percent of these entrepreneurs put their personal odds at 7 out of 10 or higher, and 33% said their chance of failing was zero.  

To provide partial remedy to “nasty surprises,” Kahneman reports on a strategy created by psychologist Gary Klein called “premortem.” Conducted in the mid-to-late stage of designing a product, program, or event, the procedure is as follows:

The facilitator or leader convenes the team for a work session. The premise of the session is a short speech: “Imagine that we are a year into the future. We implemented the plan as it now exists. The outcome was a disaster. Please take 5 to 10 minutes to write, independently and silently, a brief history of that disaster.” Individuals’ “disaster stories” are then shared aloud for the whole team.

The premortem has at least four inter-related advantages: One, it overcomes the groupthink that affects even high-performing teams once a decision appears to have been made. Two, it legitimizes doubts that otherwise may be suppressed. Three, it encourages supporters of the decision to search for possible threats they had not heretofore considered. Four, it unleashes the imagination of knowledgeable individuals in a much-needed direction.

Is the premortem a strategy you may use? I thought so. Tune in next week for another good idea.