Arsenal: Strategy & Sales

The Premortem

Don't ask if it will work. Ask why it failed.

Ask anyone, or any AI, "will my plan work?" and you get a polite yes. Tell them it already failed and ask why, and the real problems come out. The Premortem jumps you to your deadline, declares the plan dead, and shows the five most likely reasons, the warning sign for each and the fix for this week.

Run my premortem

Home / Arsenal / The Premortem

It's already over. What killed it?

Pick what you're planning, write it in a sentence, and choose how far ahead to jump. Change anything and the premortem updates.

Your plan, in a sentence or two

Jump ahead

Check only what's honestly true

I've written down the first people I'll talk toI know exactly what I'll say, and what result would make me stopThere's a date on my calendar to check resultsI've capped the time and money, and I follow up on a scheduleSomeone outside my head has poked holes in it

Runs in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded.

Imagine it's already over.Write your plan, pick a date, and press the gold button. You'll see the five most likely reasons it failed, ranked, with the warning sign and the fix for each.

Where the premortem comes from

Psychologist Gary Klein created the premortem and laid it out in Harvard Business Review in 2007. Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman made it famous in Thinking, Fast and Slow. The research behind it: a 1989 study by Deborah Mitchell, Jay Russo and Nancy Pennington found that imagining an event has already happened raised people's ability to correctly identify the reasons for an outcome by 30%.

How to run a premortem in 10 minutes

Write the plan in one or two sentences. Who, how many and by when. "Get 10 owners to ask for a free quote by the 30th" beats "grow my business".
Jump to the deadline. Pick the date the plan should be done: 30 days, 90 days or a year from today.
Declare that it failed. Not "might fail". It already did. That permission is what makes people name the real problems.
List the reasons, most likely first. For each one, write the earliest warning sign you'd see in the first two weeks.
Fix the top three this week. Turn each reason into one action with a date, write a kill line, then run the premortem again.

The premortem prompt for ChatGPT or Claude

Fill in the brackets, or run the tool above and it fills them in for you.

It's [date the plan should be done]. My plan below already failed. Badly. You're looking back from that day. MY PLAN: [who, how many, by when] 1. Tell the story of how it failed in 5 sentences. 2. List the 5 most likely reasons, most likely first. Be specific to my plan, not generic advice. 3. For each reason: the earliest warning sign I'd see in the first 14 days, and one thing I can do this week to prevent it. 4. Name the assumption I'm most sure of that's most likely wrong. 5. Give me a kill line: the result by a specific date that means I should stop or change course. Don't be nice. Don't tell me the plan is good. Ask me 2 questions if my plan is too vague to judge.

Why ours goes further

A real date: "It's Thursday, January 28" hits harder than "imagine it failed someday".
Ranked, not a pile: the five most likely causes for your kind of plan, pushed up or down by your own words and your honest answers.
A warning sign for every cause: what you'd see in the first two weeks, so you catch it early instead of at the end.
A fix for this week: and the top three become your Monday list.
Built for the work we do: lanes for an ambassador's month and an owner deciding about their business data, plus any plan at all.
A card you can save: download it, post it, run it again after the fixes and watch the survival score move.

FAQ

What is a premortem?

A premortem is a planning exercise where you imagine your plan has already failed and explain why. Psychologist Gary Klein created it and described it in Harvard Business Review in 2007. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, made it famous in Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Why does imagining failure work better than asking if a plan will work?

Asking "will this work?" invites optimism. Saying "it already failed, why?" gives you permission to name problems. A 1989 study by Mitchell, Russo and Pennington found that imagining an event has already happened raised people's ability to correctly identify reasons for the outcome by 30%.

How do I run a premortem with ChatGPT or Claude?

Tell the AI your plan, then tell it the plan already failed on a specific date and ask for the most likely reasons, the earliest warning sign for each, a fix for this week and the assumption most likely to be wrong. This page writes that prompt for you with your plan and date filled in.

What can I use it for?

Business ideas, product launches, a month of outreach, deciding whether to license your business data, career moves, investments and big life decisions. Anything with a goal and a date.

What does the survival score mean?

It is not a prediction. It is a quick read on how many common failure causes your plan has already handled. Check the boxes you can honestly check, fix the top three causes, and run it again.

Is my plan uploaded anywhere?

No. The premortem runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to us or saved. If you use the Claude or ChatGPT buttons, your plan goes to that assistant, and only when you click.

Who built this?

Rooster Agents, for the MON$TER ambassadors, Data Kings and Data Queens who help business owners in their market, and for anyone with a plan worth stress-testing. Text PREMORTEM to Rudy and he'll send you the link.

Run it before you start, not after you stop.

Text PREMORTEM to Rudy and he'll send you the tool, or run it right here.

Text Rudy