Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts · chapter 6 · id thinking-in-bets-c6-07-gary-kleins-premortem-techniqu
“Gary Klein's premortem technique -- imagining a project has failed and then generating reasons for its failure -- is more effective at surfacing risks than traditional planning because it leverages prospective hindsight.”
VERIFIEDconfidence: high⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending
Receipts
Gary Klein official website, premortem pagesource alive
Klein developed the premortem method 30 years ago. It is used in corporate boardrooms, wildland firefighting, Army programs, and on Wall Street. Nobel laureates Kahneman and Thaler have encouraged its use.
Mitchell, Russo & Pennington (1989), Journal of Behavioral Decision Makingpaywalled · manual check queued
Prospective hindsight -- imagining that an event has already occurred -- increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%.
Veinott, Klein & Wiggins (2010), 'Evaluating the Effectiveness of the PreMortem Technique on Plan Confidence'FLAGGED: dead link (503)
The premortem technique was tested with 178 college students on an H1N1 epidemic scenario. Results showed effectiveness in surfacing potential failure modes compared to control conditions.
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