Education — Mental Model

The Pre-Mortem Applied to Procurement

Imagining a contract has already failed identifies 30% more risks than asking "what might go wrong?" McKinsey endorses the technique. The UK Ministry of Defence contracts for it. Most procurement teams have never heard of it.

30%

More failure modes identified vs. standard risk methods

Like getting a 30% sharper lens on what could sink your deal

£819,600

UK Ministry of Defence contract for pre-mortem workshops

A government agency paid nearly £1M for a technique most CPOs haven't encountered

Annual revenue erosion from poor contract management

For every $100 in revenue, $9 leaks through suboptimal contract terms

Standard Approach

Asks "what might go wrong?" Surfaces only known, politically safe risks. Senior voices dominate the conversation — junior team members stay quiet about problems they suspect but won't volunteer.

Misses ~30% of failure modes

Pre-Mortem

Declares the contract has already failed — spectacularly. Each person writes reasons privately, then the group clusters and prioritizes. This surfaces what people know but were afraid to say.

Catches what risk registers miss

How to Run a Procurement Pre-Mortem — 3 Key Rules

Run it before contract award, not after. The pre-mortem is a decision gate — after supplier selection, before final commitment. Once the contract is signed, the team is invested in proving the decision was right, not imagining its failure.

Include the supplier's team when possible. A joint buyer-supplier pre-mortem surfaces misaligned assumptions about timelines, resources, and governance that neither side would catch alone. Think of it as comparing calendars before booking the meeting.

The two showstopper rule. A pre-mortem produces 15–30 failure causes. The value is in the two or three where mitigation must be built into the contract before signing. If a showstopper has no fix, the sourcing decision itself may need revisiting.

Common Mistakes

Confusing a pre-mortem with a brainstorming session wastes the technique. If the facilitator says "what could go wrong?" instead of "this has failed, tell me why," the prospective hindsight effect doesn't kick in. Similarly, skipping the independent listing step lets the most senior person define what's acceptable to say — silencing the exact voices the pre-mortem is designed to hear.

Jargon Decoder

Pre-Mortem Imagine a project already failed, then work backward to find why — like a fire drill for decisions, practiced before the real thing.

Prospective Hindsight The brain finds 30% more causes when told an event has happened than when asked what might happen — it's a grammar trick that changes how we search for answers.

Risk Register A documented list of known risks — useful, but limited to what's politically safe to write down and what senior voices agree is real.

Showstopper A failure mode that makes the entire contract or initiative fail — the kind of problem you can't afford to discover after signing.

Planning Fallacy The tendency to underestimate what can go wrong — like packing for a trip and forgetting it might rain.

Groupthink When everyone nods along in a meeting while privately worried — the pre-mortem breaks this by having people write concerns before anyone speaks.

Sources: Gary Klein, HBR (2007); McKinsey Bias Busters: Premortems (2019); McKinsey Contracting for Performance (2018); UK MoD CARP Cyber Pre-Mortem Contract; Mitchell, Russo & Pennington (1989)

Rzzro

Procurement, quantified.