Principlev1PR-157
Use pre-mortem techniques by imagining failure has occurred…
Use pre-mortem techniques by imagining failure has occurred and working backward to identify what you didn't see, rather than projecting forward from current knowledge.
Why This Is a Principle
Derives from Goals as Perceptual Filters (goals define relevance) and Belief Perseverance Against Contradictory Evidence (belief persistence). Klein's pre-mortem inverts cognitive direction—instead of asking 'what could go wrong?' (forward projection), imagine it failed and ask why (backward analysis). The Mitchell et al. finding (30% improvement in identifying future failure causes) grounds this.