In this video, I explain how you can think like a Futurist by engaging in 'pre-mortem' thinking. In essence, pre-mortem questions can enable you to explore possible futures and design preferred future scenarios.
In our strategy work for a number of years we have been focusing in on doing pre-mortems with our clients. A pre-mortem is kind of the opposite of doing a post-mortem. Now we've all heard about post-mortems, right. We do them after somebody dies or when a project goes totally haywire to get a better understanding of what went wrong. Now, there is a time and a place for that as it might valuable to learn from the past. But as a futurist, I have a love affair with what might happen in the future. As a futurist I analyse possible alternative scenarios and look at preferred futures.
One big investment in your time should be around creating pre-mortems. For example, pose this question:
Imagine that it's now 2020 and on your watch your company went belly-up. What where the trends you missed, the signals you ignored, and the decisions you delayed which led to this demise? What change will you make today to prevent this from happening?
This is the very question I asked recently when I spoke at Nordic Choice in Sweden during their annual hospitality conference. And it's the same question that's equally relevant when I spoke to Mercedes-Benz dealership in Melbourne, Australia. This pre-mortem question helps us to kind of time travel out and look back on the present moment in time from a different perspective which is much more useful than sitting back in 2020 and having 'Harry-hindsight' vision, rather we get to engage in sort of 'Freddie-foresight' vision into the future.
This is the kind of thinking that we engage in with our clients, and this is what helps them think differently, think forward and change the future and their brands for the better. Engage with us in a pre-mortem for your business. For further inquiries and requests, contact my management agency, Ode Management.