Pre-Mortem

If your growth plan has 40 assumptions and zero failure scenarios.

Surface every way your initiative could fail before you launch it. Structured sessions where your people assume the project already failed and explain why. Three phases: map the failure modes, quantify the risk, build the safeguards.

You get a prioritised failure mode map, early warning indicators that trigger before damage spreads, and safeguard playbooks built into your execution plan. Not a risk appendix. Operational architecture.

One senior consultant. Direct access. No handoff.

Built For

Leadership teams about to commit significant capital to a strategy nobody has stress-tested from the other direction. The upside deck is polished. The downside doesn't exist.

Founders and CEOs who have been burned by a failure everyone saw coming but nobody named. Once is experience. Twice is a pattern you can prevent.

Programme owners inheriting a plan built on consensus, not evidence. Forty stakeholders agreed. None were asked what could go wrong.

Boards and investors evaluating a major bet where the risk slide says "market conditions" and nothing else. You need specifics, not categories.

What You Get

Not a generic risk register. Structured failure narratives from stakeholders across functions and levels. Each failure mode described in concrete terms: what happens, why it happens, who sees it first. The map is built from facilitated sessions where the format gives permission to say what meetings suppress.

Because risk registers list categories. Failure mode maps surface the specific, concrete ways things actually break. The difference is the difference between "market risk" and "our largest customer is evaluating the competitor we ignored."

Each failure mode assessed for likelihood and severity. Plotted on a matrix that separates what needs mitigation from what needs monitoring from what needs acceptance. Scoring methodology is transparent so your team can update it as conditions change.

Because treating all risks equally means mitigating the wrong ones. The matrix forces the conversation: which failures are survivable and which are terminal.

For every critical failure mode, a set of leading indicators. Observable, measurable signals that appear weeks or months before the failure itself. Each indicator has a threshold, an owner, and an escalation path. You know what to watch, who watches it, and what happens when the needle moves.

Because most failures are visible long before they arrive. The problem is never detection. It is that nobody was told what to look for.

Each critical failure mode gets a playbook: what to do first, who decides, what resources to deploy, and what the fallback position looks like. Not theoretical contingency plans. Operational playbooks written in enough detail that your team can execute them under pressure without calling a meeting first.

Because the moment a crisis arrives is the worst time to design a response. Playbooks built in advance buy you the thing that matters most: reaction time.

A monitoring architecture that connects early warning indicators to your existing reporting cadence. Designed to integrate with however your team already tracks performance. The dashboard makes risk a standing agenda item, not a quarterly surprise. Includes the review framework so the system stays current as the initiative evolves.

Because awareness without visibility decays. The dashboard makes sure the pre-mortem stays alive in your operating rhythm, not filed in a folder nobody opens.

How It Works

Scoping Conversation

The initiative, the stakes, the assumptions. We map the decision landscape before designing the sessions: what is being committed, what has been assumed, where the pressure points sit, and who needs to be in the room. This conversation makes sure we stress-test what matters, not what is convenient.

Stakeholder Mapping

Deliberate selection of who participates. Builders, operators, decision-makers, sceptics. The quality of a pre-mortem depends entirely on who is in the room and how the groups are composed. We design session groups to maximise candour and minimise hierarchy effects.

Assume Failure

The initiative failed. Completely. Now explain why. We facilitate structured sessions where each participant looks back at the failure and describes what happened. The format gives permission to surface what optimism usually silences. The output is specific failure stories from people who know the terrain, not generic risk categories.

Cluster and Quantify

Deduplicate across groups. Cluster related failure modes. Score each for probability and impact. The priority matrix separates what needs mitigation from what needs monitoring from what needs acceptance. Some failures are likely and survivable. Some are unlikely and terminal. The goal is informed risk, not zero risk.

Early Warning Design

For every critical failure mode: what to watch, who watches it, and what threshold triggers action. Leading indicators that appear weeks or months before the failure itself. Observable, measurable signals with owners and escalation paths. Most failures are visible long before they arrive. The problem is nobody was told what to look for.

Safeguard Architecture

Response playbooks for the highest-priority failure modes. What to do first, who decides, what resources to deploy, and what the fallback position looks like. Not theoretical contingency plans. Operational playbooks written in enough detail that your team can execute them under pressure without calling a meeting first.

Integration Stress-Test

Pressure-test the safeguards against the actual execution plan. Do the early warnings integrate with existing reporting? Do the playbooks account for resource constraints? Does the monitoring architecture fit your operating rhythm? We iterate until the safeguard system works with the plan, not alongside it.

Present, Handoff, and Monitoring Activation

We walk your team through every finding, every priority, and the logic behind each safeguard. Questions answered live. Then full handoff: the failure mode map, the priority matrix, the indicators, the playbooks, and the monitoring framework. Monitoring activated from day one. Everything you need to act. Nothing you need us for.

Pricing

Pre-Mortem Sprint

£10,000

2 weeks

Start this week, deliverables by 19 March

Start here if you need to surface what everyone’s thinking but not saying.

2 weeks
Directional
Comprehensive failure mode map with initial prioritisation.

Run the pre-mortem

Pre-Mortem Complete

£16,000

4 weeks

Start this week, deliverables by 2 April

Choose this if you need safeguards built into the plan.

4 weeks
Actionable
Prioritised failure modes with safeguards integrated into execution plan.
Includes Probability/impact assessment, early warning indicators, contingency playbooks

Build the safeguards

Pre-Mortem Board-Ready

£24,000+

5 weeks

Start this week, deliverables by 9 April

This one’s for decisions that need board sign-off.

5 weeks
Bankable
Board-ready risk assessment with monitoring architecture.
Includes Executive presentation, board memo, quarterly review framework

Prepare for the board

Right Analysis. Wrong Initiative?

Your risk landscape isn't standard. Neither is the pre-mortem. A 30-minute conversation tells us which initiative to stress-test, which stakeholder groups to include, and where the real pressure points sit before we start.

Same price. Same timeline. Every session pointed at the failure modes that would actually sink your specific initiative.

Scope it together

No obligation. No pitch. Just specifics.