Frame pre-mortems as explanations of failure…
Frame pre-mortem prompts as 'It is [future date]. This has failed completely. Write why.' rather than 'What could go wrong?' to shift cognition from speculation to explanation.
When This Fires
- Project kickoff: before committing team resources to a plan
- Product launch: before shipping to users
- Hiring decisions: before extending an offer
- Any commitment where failure would be costly and reversing would be difficult
Common Failure Mode
Running a pre-mortem with "what could go wrong?" framing and feeling satisfied with the result. The team generates five obvious risks, assigns mitigations, and moves on. The risks that actually kill the project — the ones involving coordination failures, incentive misalignment, and unstated assumptions — never surface because predictive reasoning doesn't reach them.
The Protocol
Write the exact prompt: "It is [6 months from now]. [Project name] has failed completely. The team is doing a post-mortem. Write the explanation of why it failed." Give everyone 5 minutes to write independently before sharing. The independence prevents anchoring — if the first person says "scope creep," everyone else's explanation shifts toward scope creep. Collect all explanations, then categorize and prioritize.