The unexpected value of a pre-mortem
When you fully face your fears, you usually realise you'll actually be OK no matter what.
Have you ever come across the concept of a pre-mortem?
A lot of projects fail, that much we know. One reason for this is that people are unwilling or feel unable to speak up in the planning phase with their concerns. A pre-mortem uses the idea of prospective hindsight — imagining that an event has already occurred — to explore and identify reasons for future outcomes.
In other words, imagine the project has already failed - why would that be?
It becomes the task of the team undertaking the pre-mortem to come up with as many plausible reasons for a project’s failure as they can.
Reframing the conversation this way is powerful. Those speaking up are no longer risking being perceived as naysayers or doing the project down. Instead, an environment is created where success depends on identifying as many reasons for failure as possible. It becomes safe and welcome to share concerns, and allows teams to harness different perspectives and experiences to reasons understand why projects might fail - so they can mitigate for them.
And, having been involved in my own version of a pre-mortem last week, what I’ve realised is that the benefits go much further.
Last Saturday I had the honour (and mild terror) of umpiring the women’s reserve race as part of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Races. For those not familiar, the Boat Race is a historic annual set of rowing races between the two Universities which has been running in some form since 1829. The course is on the tidal part of the river Thames, over a 4 1/4 mile, winding course. There are no buoys or lanes marked. Instead, the crews - and their coxswains who steer - compete to race along the fastest flowing part of the stream, the location of which and the fierce competition between them is adjudicated by the race umpire following in a launch. It’s a hugely popular event, with hundreds of thousands of people watching on the banks of the river and millions more on TV.
The nature of the race, both in its course and its length, is such that there are about a million things which could happen, and could potentially go wrong. While anything safety related is, rightly, well covered and largely managed by others, managing race scenarios and racing incidents is down to the umpire.
So, I spent a good chunk of last week talking through race scenarios with the other race umpires. They ranged from those with a relatively high probability, the crews clashing oars, being late to the start or damaging equipment, to the seriously unlikely, swamping/sinking or a crew member coming out of the boat.
In each case, I considered how and when it could come about, and what decisions and actions I could and would take afterwards to restore a fair race - which in the most serious incidents could merit disqualification.
Without boring you with the details - because that involves nerd-level interest in the race and umpiring - I wanted to reflect on what the process provided.
There was the obvious - the opportunity to (mostly) mitigate against some scenarios. There was a feeling of preparedness for the race for me, a familiarity with key actions and decisions under certain circumstances.
But it went deeper than that. The process gave me a sense of inner confidence, that I could do this, and more than that, could handle whatever was thrown at me. It gave me confidence in my decision making, as the further we went through the clearer I was at determining my course of action. It reminded me how unlikely many scenarios were, and that expending unnecessary energy worrying about them was of no value. I could simply trust my understanding of the rules and my ability to make decisions under pressure. I knew, deep down in my bones, it would be OK.
One of the other umpires asked me just before the race if I was nervous (“bricking it” in her terms!). My response?
“Yes, and, I back myself. I know I’ve got this”.
I use a similar, truncated, version of this process with my clients. When they’re afraid that something might happen (or might not work out), I invite them to face their worst-case scenario. To place themselves in the position where the worst thing they can imagine happening, has happened.
Then ask: would they be OK?
In almost all cases the answer is yes, they would. Would it be rubbish? Yes. Would they feel sad and disappointed? Also yes. But they would be OK. They would survive, move on, try something else.
And lo and behold, having faced every nightmarish possibility that I could imagine might unfold on Saturday, my race was completely uneventful from my perspective. I dropped the flag and said go, the crews raced, and the Oxford crew, Osiris, won comprehensively. No drama. Funny how often it works out like that…
Sweating the Small Stuff
This week: face your worst case scenario.
What’s something that’s been on your mind that you’re worrying about? What’s your worst case scenario for that? The very worst thing you can imagine might happen?
Now, imagine it goes that way, then consider what you’d do. Remind yourself that you’d be OK.
When something is worrying us, it tends to colour all our interactions and discussions about that (and about other things too). Practising facing your fears so you can let them go allows you to approach interactions from a neutral place, and helps avoid the contagion of unnecessary fear.
Have you tried facing your worst case scenario? How did it go? Come join in the conversation via the button below.
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