A CEO calls her staff into the conference room on the eve of the launch of a major new initiative. They file in and take their seats around the table. She calls the meeting to attention and begins, \u201cI have bad news. The project has failed spectacularly. What went wrong?\u201d<\/p>\n
The team is perplexed: What?! But we haven\u2019t even launched yet\u2026!<\/em><\/p>\n I know it seems strange and maybe even counterproductive to demand that employees think negatively instead of optimistically, but in business circles today, everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies and the Harvard Business Review are doing this exact exercise. In a direct response to optimistic, feel-good thinking, these leaders are encouraging their employees to think negatively<\/em>.<\/p>\n The technique that the CEO above was using was designed by psychologist Gary Klein. It\u2019s called a premortem<\/em>. In a premortem, a project manager must envision what could go wrong\u2014what will<\/em> go wrong\u2014in advance, before starting. Why? Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don\u2019t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish.<\/p>\n In fact, I think more companies need a\u00a0Chief Dissent Officer<\/a>, someone to shoot down the bad ideas that our blind spots and naive optimism too often obscure. They can catch us when we are puffed up with visions of our own greatness and preordained success. Remember Netflix\u2019s aborted attempt to split into two separate companies<\/a>? Or when Google Wave<\/a>\u00a0was marketed as \u201cthe next Gmail,\u201d only to be shut down in a little over a year? If only these great companies had stopped to envision the possible travails that awaited them, they might have been able to prevent them.<\/p>\n No one has ever understood this better than former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who, reflecting on the collapse of his fortune and fame, told a reporter, \u201cIf you\u2019re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.\u201d<\/p>\n The practice goes back much further than just psychology though. It dates back many thousands of years, in fact\u2014to the great Stoic<\/a>\u00a0philosophers like Marcus Aurelius<\/a>, Epictetus<\/a> and Seneca<\/a>. And they had an even better name for it:\u00a0premeditatio malorum<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(premeditation of evils).<\/p>\n A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then,\u00a0in his head (or in writing), he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening\u2014a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing happens to the wise man against his expectation,\u201d he wrote to a friend. \u201c. . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned\u2014and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans.\u201d<\/p>\n By doing this exercise, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans<\/a>. He was fitted for defeat or victory. And let\u2019s be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one.<\/p>\n In a case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to do something the rest of us too often fail to do\u2014manage expectations. Because sometimes the only answer to \u201cWhat if?\u201d is, \u201cIt will suck but we\u2019ll be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n We often learn the hard way that our world is ruled by external factors<\/a>. We don\u2019t always get what is rightfully ours, even if we\u2019ve earned it. Not everything is as clean and straightforward as the games they play in business school. Psychologically, we must prepare ourselves for this to happen.<\/p>\n If it comes as a constant surprise each and every time something unexpected occurs, you\u2019re not only going to be miserable<\/a>\u00a0whenever you attempt something big, you\u2019re going to have a much harder time accepting it and moving on to attempts two, three, and four. The only guarantee, ever, is that things could go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation, because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.<\/p>\n The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It\u2019s far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard.<\/p>\n