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Pre-Mortem Analysis

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A pre-mortem analysis is an essential piece of the jigsaw; a valuable addition to the goal setting process. You have most likely heard of a post-mortem exercise, which is when you analyse how a past event turned out the way it did. E.g., you conduct a post-match review after losing a match, looking at reasons why you lost to learn what you could do better next time.

With a post-mortem analysis you need to wait until the end of the event before addressing problems, and developing improvements for the future. Whereas, the idea of a pre-mortem analysis is to foresee the problems in advance, which allows you to create solutions to avoid the problems from actually occurring in the first place. Pre-mortems lends itself to the saying, 'prevention is better than cure'.

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To conduct a pre-mortem analysis, you:

 

  • Step 1 - Imagine the 'event' has already occured and you have failed in obtaining your goal.

  • Step 2 - Think about what might have gone wrong, i.e. what are the reasons you can think of for the failure? What were the roadblocks? Make a list, but ignore things that you have no control over. Involve a coach and/or important others in this step may help create an extensive list.

  • Step 3 - Looking at the list you created, develop strategies/solutions that you think would help reduce the likelihood of the problems from occurring or minimise their impact, to strengthen your chance of obtaining your goals. Focus on elements that you feel had the most impact on failure.

  • Step 4 - Insert these strategies into your daily plan.

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Research has shown that conducting a pre-mortem analysis encourages creative thinking, improves your planning, and reduces over-confidence in an existing plan (Serrat, 2002; Hunter, Randall, & Colbert, 2018; Veinott, Klein, & Wiggens, 2010). These factors ensure you are better prepared for otherwise unforseen circumstances, that could prevent you from achieving your goals.

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Peabody (2017) completed a study on the effectiveness of a pre-mortem analysis with army cadets whose tasks was to navigate an obstacle course. Initially, the cadets were presented with a plan of how to best to negotiate the obstacles by a team leader. When reviewing the plan, they (control group) got to ask questions (which was the typical military practice for this type of session) and adjusted their plan accordingly, or (the pre-mortem group) made a list of possible reasons why the plan may fail, and offered potential solutions.

 

The cadets then completed the obstacle course. Performane analysis showed the cadets who participated in the pre-mortem analysis showed less fixation (fixation refers to when a person is confronted with a difficult problem, they fixate on continuing to try a method even though it is not working), and produced fewer fouls (fouls refered to mistakes on the obstacle course, e.g. dropped equipment). These findings suggest that a pre-mortem analysis helps form a better plan, and as a consequence produces better results.

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References

Hunter, A., Randall, T., & Colbert, H. (2018). Intuitive Insights For Course Of Action Development. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting, 62(1), 212–216. https://doi.org/10.1177/1541931218621050

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Peabody, M. (2017). Improving Planning: Quantitative evaluation of the PreMortem technique in field and laboratory settings. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etdr/374/.

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Serrat, O. (2012). The PreMortem Technique International Publications. Cornell University ILR School.

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Veinott, B., Klein, G.A., & Wiggens, S. (2010). Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Premortem Technique on Plan Confidence. 7th International ISCRAM Conference. Seattle.

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