OrganizationalAGAdam Grant 2-min read 30-min action

The Anonymous Pre-Mortem

Have the team write — anonymously — why the project will fail before it launches.

The concept

Psychological safety & rethinking

Teams hide concerns when speaking up is costly. Anonymity is a temporary scaffold that lets the real risks surface so the team can address them in the open.

Try it now

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Sourced from

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

Chapter 4: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

By Adam GrantView source

Get reminded to actually run this

Pivots only work when you use them. Send me a gentle nudge:

Pivot pairs

Curated cross-disciplinary pairings that strengthen this one.

The Conflict Pair

Pair with: The Unreliable Narrator Check

Grant's anonymous pre-mortem surfaces what nobody will say out loud. Gottlieb's unreliable-narrator check makes sure you're hearing it accurately.

How people ran this

Used this before a portfolio review. Sat with the dread for 8 minutes, then opened Figma and just shipped the worst version. Got the best feedback of my year.

Maya, product designer

Ran it during a planning week when I kept rewriting the same doc. Three rough versions in 15 minutes — my staff eng picked the one I least liked.

Jordan, eng manager

I'm a chronic deleter. The 'name the feeling' step was the unlock. It was almost always shame, not perfectionism.

Anon

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