What is a pre-mortem? A practical introduction

Most business planning is written from the perspective of success. A pre-mortem flips that perspective: you imagine that your business has already failed and ask why.

Why it works

When failure is treated as a fact rather than a possibility, people find it easier to name risks they would otherwise keep to themselves. The exercise turns vague worries into concrete, discussable causes.

Running your first pre-mortem

1. Describe your business model in a few sentences.
2. Set a horizon - three years is a useful default.
3. Write a short story of how the business failed.
4. List every cause you can think of.
5. Rate each cause for likelihood and impact.
6. Pick the top three and define one preventive action for each.

What to avoid

• Debating causes before everyone has written theirs down.
• Treating scores as precise predictions.
• Producing a list and never looking at it again - set a review date.

Demonstration article - to be replaced or approved by the author.