Juneteenth Resources for Tugboat
Sam Collins
University of Washington Great Migration
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American Black West Museum
(Podcast) Juneteenth
The Pre-Mortem for NatCap 24
This Pre-Mortem agenda, “run of show” was developed for NatCap in Feb 2024. There were a few unique constraints that required changing the typical agenda detailed in my book, Move to the Edge, Declare it Center.
Facilitator notes were developed over multiple sessions with clients, workshops and keynotes.
Constraints
No Slides nor projector
No post-its nor large format paper
Day 3: people might be a little tired/fried
People are working on different projects, are in different industries/domains
Limit to one hour
60-70 attendees
Adjustments
I made several changes:
Get to the “WHY” within the first 3 minutes, and make sure it’s memorable.
Get people to move at least once during the session to generate energy
Have people choose one project to focus on per group, rather than a topic area or risk area. This was a debate, because the original design was to focus on a risk, then have people respond to the risks from their perspectives of their own projects.
What that approach loses, however, is the shared experience of focusing on *one project, as well as the team building that comes with helping a fellow attendee with their project.
Based on feedback, this choice resulted in greater emotional connection with the “everything went wrong” while also providing individuals with “free high quality consulting” as one attendee noted.
Groups of 5 to have diverse POV, but enough time for people to share ideas.
Short-cut assigning mitigating actions into quadrants of Feasibility and Impact.
Facilitator Notes
FACILITATOR NOTE: Start each exercise with people writing for themselves first. This tactic is critical for two reasons.
It promotes independent thinking and diverse perspectives.
It enables introverts to participate more easily
It prevents the groupthink that makes brainstorming so poor as a way to generate ideas.
Run of Show/Agenda
Times are the minute marks I needed to hit, not the length of the section.
Intro (0:00)
This crowd understands complex problems. System problems w no single answer
But we’re trained to have the “right” answer
Why that matters
Facebook and Autonomous vehicle, oximeter sensor stories
FACILITATOR NOTE: Ideally, facilitators should put an example up that matters to THEM, but connects to the audience in a way they can feel viscerally.
No one intentionally designs products to hurt people.
BUT we need Tools, practices to help navigate complexity, so we get confident with ourselves and our teams.
Transition
What if you could learn from regret, in advance? And what if you could learn with your team who have different perspectives, but want the same goal?
Introduce Pre-Mortem (4.00)
This is the most requested practice in the book
Goal of the session is to build your confidence in leading this process with teams
We are going to do an abbreviated version]
FACILITATOR NOTE: I usually budget 90 minutes for this, including Q/A of 15 minutes
Define Your Project
So each of you write an important project that is going to launch in the next six months.
Write it on paper, notecards or phone for yourself first.
Project conditions
In development for at least three months before today
Has a release or launch date within the next 9 months
Is a group, team or department project (e.g. not solo)
You know what the metrics for success are
Divide the Group (7.00)
In your group of four, you are going to share the project, and what your main goal for this project will be.
Then between the five of you, select one of your projects to be the subject of the exercise.
Once you pick, the job of the four of you is to be on that person‘s team and you’re going to help them be successful.
FACILITATOR NOTE: groups ideally are no less than 4, no more than 7. This gives enough space for people to meaningfully contribute, while have diverse perspectives and roles.
Introduce the Question (13.00)
On December 31, 2024. Your project is an unmitigated disaster. You have lost money for people you care about, you’ve lost credibility, the people that report for you have lost trust, and you personally feel really shaky.
When you wake up, you will read an “above the fold” article in the publication that matters most to you (industry publication, magazine or newspaper).
In the next 2 min, write the headline and opening three sentences in the article. Make it vivid, concrete, juicy, critical or scandalous. Important - challenge yourself to write something that makes you feel cringey.
Share the headline and 3 lines with your group. You can choose to share it or keep it right one thing down at least, that makes you feel icky.
Quick Movement (15.00)
Stand-up. Shake it out. If I don’t hear someone say fuck I know you’re not really in it yet.
Now you’ve gotten it out of your system, your job is to help your teammate. Put your own away.
FACILITATOR NOTE: any kind of movement, including letting people get coffee/water, will enable more flow for the group.
Begin Pre-Mortem (17.00)
You’ll now start the Pre Mortem. Write on your paper, “What Happened? You have two minutes.
Remember to identify one thing that you personally did, or did not do that led to this outcome.
Team members: you need to identify what went wrong with the project. Think of political events, climate, regulation, lethal conflict, communication breakdown, leadership failure, poor change management, org blindspots, team composition.
FACILITATOR NOTE: For project leaders or company leaders, forecasting your own responsibility signals that it is safe for the group to share their own misgivings. I tend to go first during the sharing portion for that reason.
Share What went Wrong in groups (19.00)
FACILITATOR NOTE:
In normal situations, make sure someone is taking notes or writing on a white board/butcher paper. Observe if participation is lively and shared vs. one person dominating.
Some groups will try to *solve the problem at this stage. It’s more important to get a long list from different POV for the exercise to be effective. Nudge them back to simply listing What Went Wrong by reminding them there will be time to solve later.
Develop Mitigations (29.00)
Work backward
How would you mitigate this event on the negative outcome on your project? What actions would you take? There are two types of mitigating actions:
What things can you do that are feasible — they are in your control. Don’t waste time on things that are *not in your control.
What things will have a big impact — higher probability of success
FACILITATOR NOTE
Write, project or share a version of this quadrant image. This will help the group prioritize actions.
In a normal group, make sure each high impact/feasibility action is assigned to a specific person. They are not necessarily accountable to fix it, but they are accountable to the group to follow up within 1-2 weeks on the next action/plan of action (including delegating it)
This is key to people regarding the exercise as legitimate. Nothing worse than spending hours problem solving without any followup.
Share Mitigations to Entire Group (39.00)
Ask for people to share the following:
The Project
The “Disaster” headline, publication and their article
1-3 Causes (What Happened?)
1-3 High feasibility / High Impact Mitigating Steps
Anything you learned, especially something unexpected, surprising, or from a different point of view.
FACILITATOR NOTE: Modify the number of shares depending the size of the group and time. Make sure to leave 3 minutes for the conclusion,10 minutes for Q/A.
Conclusions and Q/A (49.00)
Original idea for premortem is from a psychologist named Gary Klein.
We do this internally before all major projects. We iterate quarterly, or 2 weeks for intense or fast-changing projects.
We do it with mixed client-Truss project teams. It builds trust – clients are not used to their consultants admitting that things could go wrong. And both teams learn something – usually an assumption–that would not have come out any other way.
Why does this work
Opens problem-solving to diverse, independent perspectives, rather than just the “leaders”
It’s a counterfactual which engages the imagination and the body, not just the intellect.
The more vivid and concrete the “unmitigated disaster”, the more people feel the experience.
Engaging the imagination and the feeling of regret generates different ideas then a typical “planning” process.
Close with another vivid story
I had to RIF 46 people of a 150 company. Embarrassing
Reorg- we do pre mortems weekly as we get new info.
FACILITATOR NOTE: Insert your own story here, especially if you can recall something where you had regret because of a blindspot, a bad decision, that had consequences that could have been avoid if you had used a pre-mortem. This will solidify why the process is important and help the audience/group engage with the pre-mortem more deeply.
Close: Build Confidence to use the Pre-Mortem
In times of complexity and uncertainty you demonstrate leadership not by individual heroism, but by building systems that are sustainable, scalable, and shareable
The pre-mortem is part of a system of project management and risk analysis.
If you can make it part of your system, then It’s “just a thing you do” as an organization.