Reflection is Good. Anticipation is Better.

If you were to look up the term “post-mortem” in the dictionary, you would find a medical-based definition first and foremost.

Medically speaking, it is, as a post-mortem is a way to essentially find out what went wrong with a human being. But as I have discussed in previous blogs, post-mortems are just as commonly applied to failed business ventures, products, services, and corporate processes alike.

Post-mortems are useful in the many different applications they are conducted in because they allow for the identification of a problem and how to better prevent them from occurring in the future. Specific to business, post-mortems allow leaders and managers to identify where a product, system, or service failed, where budget was exceeded, and any other issues that occurred along the way.

Of course, the issue with post-mortems in business is that they occur after the fact, after a product has already failed, or, worst of all, after your business or organization has already been irreversibly disrupted. Yes, post-mortems are useful tools, but they are agile, reactionary, and a wait-and-see approach to problem solving.

The answer to this? A pre-mortem that solves problems before they occur! But before delving into how that is possible, let’s look at a real-world example of where a pre-mortem would…