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Hi! I’m Luca. How can I help?
Email me. I reply within 24h.

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You probably know about POST-mortems: questions asked at the end of a project to extract some learnings, such as, “why did the project fail and what can we do differently next time.” 

Instead, PRE-mortems are asked before the project even starts, working backwards from an imagined failure. “Let’s imagine that the project will have failed. What could have happened, and what can we do now to prevent it?”

POST-mortems are about not making the same mistake twice, whereas PRE-mortems are about not making a mistake at all, and therefore are superior. That said, the two are complementary, and healthy organizations do both.

Here are some examples of good PRE-mortem questions:

  • Imagine that your key employee just handed you his resignation letter. What could have brought him to do that?
  • Imagine that it is the middle of the night, and your phone is ringing. You check the calling number: it’s your second in command. He must be calling you for an urgent problem. You pick up. What does he say to you?
  • Imagine your key client just defected to a competitor. Why would it be?

PRE-mortems can also be positive:

  • Imagine that, five years from now, you are wildly successful. What could you have done? (only consider answers that are fairly reproducible, i.e. that don’t depend excessively on luck)

PRE-mortems are simple, teachable, and effective. Do a lot of them, and do them before you need them.

Management concepts
1. Teams are adaptive systems
2. Just In Time
3. Lagging indicators
4. Leading indicators
5. Core Values
6. Standard Operating Procedures
7. Scoping
8. Training expectations
9. Job descriptions
10. Spin-offs
11. Kaizen
12. PRE-mortems
13. Too much micromanagement or too little management?
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