- Pre-mortem Technique Overview: The pre-mortem technique is a project management strategy where a post-mortem analysis is done before initiating a project. This technique involves imagining a project's failure and listing out every potential cause of the failure. This allows for strategic thinking and the creation of solutions to these potential problems in advance.
- Process of Pre-mortem: The process begins by selecting a project and then visualizing its absolute failure. Following this, possible causes for this failure are listed out, including both external and subtle psychological causes. These causes are then prioritized based on how threatening and likely they are. Solutions are then brainstormed for overcoming each potential problem.
- Applications of Pre-mortem: Although this technique seems most relevant for business projects, it can be applied broadly to a variety of areas in life, including relationships, spirituality, personal development, weight loss, and more. This strategy helps individuals identify personal weaknesses and potential obstacles and develop preventive measures ensuring success in their endeavours.
- Personal Examples: Gura speaks about his personal experiences of self-sabotage and failure, particularly in previous business ventures. He emphasizes the need for recognizing potential internal reasons for failure, like getting demoralized owing to setbacks, lack of necessary technical skills, and failure to maintain focus due to disagreements with others.
- Specific Causes of Business Failure: Several realistic causes highlighted for business failure include a sudden economic recession causing financial struggles, competitors beating you to the market, a lack of action stemming from paralysis by analysis, loose tax expense management leading to audits, and high-focus on personal artistic preferences over customer needs.
- Strategic Thinking and Balance: In this process of self-analysis and problem prediction, strategic thinking is important. It combines intuition and logic, considering both the big picture and practical details. Gura advises against overanalyzing and encourages maintaining a balance in this regard.
- Success Expectations from the Pre-mortem Technique: Gura's personal success stories associated with the use of the pre-mortem technique, such as weight loss and starting Actualized.org, were shared. He strongly emphasizes that by applying this knowledge and strategic thinking, individuals can witness major transformations in their lives.
- Psychological Causes of Business Failure: Subtle psychological factors can lead to business failure, including getting bored, requiring financial security, and lack of discipline. Emotional pressures such as family obligations can distract from the business, while practical problems such as data loss can also lead to failure. Constantly being distracted by new ideas can be a significant cause of business failure, and a lack of technical skills can hinder progress. A tendency to lose focus and sight of the overarching vision can also lead to failure.
- Prioritizing and Addressing Causes of Failure: An effective way to tackle these causes of failure is to create a list and then introspect to identify the top 3 causes that are most likely to pose a problem. Identifying and acknowledging personal weaknesses and tendencies that could lead to failure can help address them more effectively.
- Brainstorming Solutions to Potential Failures: Brainstorming solutions for each cause of failure can be beneficial. Solutions could include avoiding distractions, managing personal relationships responsibly, preventing burnout, addressing financial insecurities, and maintaining focus. Coming up with realistic and practical solutions can mitigate potential risks.
- Application of Pre-Mortem in Different Areas of Life: The concept of pre-mortem extends beyond business, and can be applied to various areas like career transitions, quitting jobs, and planning life purposes. Conducting a pre-mortem can help anticipate and mitigate potential challenges in these areas, thereby enhancing chances of success.
- Pre-Mortem for Long-Term Career Planning: Objective and comprehensive planning can prevent career failures. Applying the pre-mortem technique to an entire career can show potential obstacles and risks. Major psychological causes of failure can be identified and solutions devised, which could save a career.
- Pre-Mortem for Life Purpose Planning: Applying pre-mortem to life purposes can provide insight into potential challenges and causes of failure. Proper anticipation and planning can significantly influence whether a life purpose is achieved.
- Use of Pre-Mortem technique in various life areas: The Pre-Mortem technique can be beneficially applied in many areas of life such as earning a degree in college, weight loss, a spiritual journey towards enlightenment, learning a new hobby or even planning your entire life. It can assist in imagining potential failures and creating counteractive solutions.
- Pre-Mortem technique in Relationships and Travelling: Using the Pre-Mortem technique can also be valuable in navigating relationships, planning marriage or predicting obstacles during an intended travel. It helps identify potential setbacks and create realistic strategies that would contribute to the desired outcome.
- Pre-Mortem technique for Annual Goals: The Pre-Mortem technique can also be useful to strategize for the upcoming year. Identifying what would be considered a failure, understanding possible reasons for prior failures and formulating strategies to overcome the same, can prove to be beneficial.
- Personal Application of Pre-Mortem Technique: The host provides personal instances where he successfully applied the Pre-Mortem technique, such as, for weight loss, relocating from Dallas to Las Vegas and starting his own organization, Actualized.org. This technique helped him anticipate potential issues and create solutions to avoid them.
- Exercise and Worksheet for Strategic Thinking: The host encourages viewers to apply the Pre-Mortem technique to one project or endeavor of their life, guided by a free downloadable worksheet. Completing this exercise would help the viewers to experience strategic thinking and the satisfaction of being proactive and forward-thinking.
- Note on Strategic Thinking: The host emphasizes that strategic thinking should be a balanced blend of intuitive thinking and logical thinking rather than overanalyzing every decision or being too logical. It should consider both the grand vision and the detailed practical steps for realizing that vision.
- Importance of Personal Growth: The host encourages the viewers to continue learning these practical and accessible techniques, asserting that investing time and interest in their self-development would bring in unforeseen prosperity, a deeper understanding of obstacles and better strategies for fulfilling their life goals.