• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Protect the Downside with Pre-mortems

November 2, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'The Obstacle Is the Way' by Ryan Holiday (ISBN 1591846358) American self-help author Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle Is the Way (2014) draws inspiration from Stoic philosophy to demonstrate how obstacles and challenges can be transformed into opportunities for personal growth and success. One recommended mindset is the pre-mortem: envisioning potential difficulties aligns with Stoic principles of accepting what one cannot control and focusing on their responses to external events:

In a postmortem, doctors convene to examine the causes of a patient’s unexpected death so they can learn and improve for the next time a similar circumstance arises. Outside of the medical world, we call this a number of things—a debriefing, an exit interview, a wrap-up meeting, a review—but whatever it’s called, the idea is the same: We’re examining the project in hindsight, after it happened.

A pre-mortem is different. In it, we look to envision what could go wrong, what will go wrong, in advance, before we start. Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don’t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish. Your plan and the way things turn out rarely resemble each other. What you think you deserve is also rarely what you’ll get. Yet we constantly deny this fact and are repeatedly shocked by the events of the world as they unfold.

Idea for Impact: By embracing anticipation, you equip yourself with the tools to fortify your defenses, and in some cases, sidestep challenges altogether. You’re ready with a safety net ready to catch you if you stumble. With anticipation, you can endure.

P.S. Many industries—engineering, manufacturing, healthcare just to name a few—have a very formal, structured, systematic approach to identify and prioritize potential failures, their causes, and their consequences. As with a pre-mortem, the primary purpose of FMEA is to proactively assess and mitigate risks by understanding how a process or system might fail and the impact of those failures.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. More Data Isn’t Always Better
  2. Be Smart by Not Being Stupid
  3. How to Solve a Problem By Standing It on Its Head
  4. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  5. Why We’re So Bad At Defining Problems

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Mental Models, Problem Solving, Risk, Thinking Tools, Wisdom

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Popular Now

Anxiety Assertiveness Attitudes Balance Biases Coaching Conflict Conversations Creativity Critical Thinking Decision-Making Discipline Emotions Entrepreneurs Etiquette Feedback Getting Along Getting Things Done Goals Great Manager Leadership Leadership Lessons Likeability Mental Models Mentoring Mindfulness Motivation Networking Parables Performance Management Persuasion Philosophy Problem Solving Procrastination Relationships Risk Simple Living Social Skills Stress Suffering Thinking Tools Thought Process Time Management Winning on the Job Wisdom

About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

Get Updates

Signup for emails

Subscribe via RSS

Contact Nagesh Belludi

RECOMMENDED BOOK:
Meditations

Meditations: Marcus Aurelius

Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius's diaries remain the sterling paradigm of the stoic mindset: civility, moderation in all things, and taking in triumph and tragedy with equanimity.

Explore

  • Announcements
  • Belief and Spirituality
  • Business Stories
  • Career Development
  • Effective Communication
  • Great Personalities
  • Health and Well-being
  • Ideas and Insights
  • Inspirational Quotations
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Reading
  • Leading Teams
  • Living the Good Life
  • Managing Business Functions
  • Managing People
  • MBA in a Nutshell
  • Mental Models
  • News Analysis
  • Personal Finance
  • Podcasts
  • Project Management
  • Proverbs & Maxims
  • Sharpening Your Skills
  • The Great Innovators

Recently,

  • Question the Now, Imagine the Next
  • The Abilene Paradox: Just ‘Cause Everyone Agrees Doesn’t Mean They Do
  • Inspirational Quotations #1102
  • A Thief’s Trial by Fire
  • Did School Turn You Into a Procrastinator?
  • Inspirational Quotations #1101
  • Luck Doesn’t Just Happen

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!