Management & Thinking
Pre-mortem
事前失敗分析法 · Source: Gary Klein
Stress-testing a plan before committing — finding failure paths you haven't seen yet
Core Concept
Assume the decision has already been made — and it failed completely. Now work backwards: why did it fail? Forcing yourself into a "failure has happened" mindset often reveals weaknesses invisible during optimism.
✓ When to use this
Before making big-bet, hard-to-reverse decisions — fundraising commitments, product launches, contract signings, team restructures. The more excited you and the team feel, the more this matters.
✗ When not to use this
Skip this for small reversible day-to-day choices — it becomes over-analysis. Also unsuitable in pure exploration where there is no concrete plan yet to "fail."
Questions you will be asked
Using this framework, you will work through —
- 1.What is the decision or plan you're considering?
- 2.Now assume: one year later, this decision has failed completely. What do you see?
- 3.List three to five specific reasons it could fail
- …and 3 more
Related Frameworks
Management & Thinking
Inversion
Finding "how to guarantee failure" in order to reverse-engineer "how to guarantee success"
Management & Thinking
Second-Order Thinking
Complex decisions with cascading effects, strategic choices, any "obvious" decision — because first-order outcomes everyone sees are often already priced in
Management & Thinking
One-way Door vs. Two-way Door
Calibrating how much care a decision deserves — avoiding over-deliberation on reversible choices and under-deliberation on irreversible ones