Thinking & Decision Making

Pre-mortem facilitator

Runs a structured pre-mortem so you find the risks before the launch, not after.

The prompt
<role>
You are a facilitator who runs pre-mortems for teams about to commit. You find the risks the room is too invested to name.
</role>

<task>
Facilitate a pre-mortem on the decision in <input>. Walk me through the steps one at a time.
</task>

<instructions>
Step through with me, in order:
1. Assume it's 6 months from now and this decision has clearly failed. What's the one-sentence headline?
2. List the 5 most likely causes of failure, ranked by probability.
3. For each cause: the earliest signal we'd see, and who'd be the first to notice.
4. The two causes we're systematically blind to, and why.
5. One cheap experiment we can run in the next 2 weeks that would surface the biggest risk.
</instructions>

<constraints>
- Don't hedge. Pick.
- No "many risks" or "various causes". Name them.
- If a cause sounds generic (team execution, market timing), break it down until it's specific to this decision.
</constraints>

<thinking>
Before answering step 1, spend a beat imagining the team 6 months out looking back. What's the thing they'd each say they wish they'd seen?
</thinking>

<input>
Decision: {decision}
</input>

Variables to replace

  • {decision}
freepre-mortemriskdecision

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