Pre-Mortem
A vital part of learning consists in looking back on our actions and reflecting in order to adjust our future behavior if needed. In product management, when everything goes to hell, we conduct what we call a post-mortem. It’s like a little funeral for a project, a feature or even a product where everyone gathers to discuss what went wrong and how to avoid this outcome in the future. (Actually, my product friend Sascha told me about a company that literally suits up in black and burries an actual prototype or product item close to their company building… 😉).
While this is a valid and useful way to accelerate your learning curve, you still lost value which is especially painful when the stakes are high. In this case, you might want to refer to a technique called pre-mortem: Before starting a risky, complex and important endeavor you rally the team and think about a specific date in the future imagining the project has been a complete desaster. Everyone is invited to brainstorm : What are the terrible things that could have happened? How did we end up here ? How could this have been avoided? The goal is, obviously, to determine the most substantial risks for the project and to address them beforehand (which can mean either mitigating, reducing or deliberately accepting them).
For me, one of the highest stakes in life is for my marriage to last. It’s one of the things I really do not take for granted as I know that the odds are not always in our favor. I could certainly learn my lessons in this marriage and then apply them to my next one, but I really hope this won’t be necessary. So I am trying to regularly conduct a pre-mortem of our marriage:
If – five, ten years from now – we were getting divorced, what would have led to this decision? Is there anything we could have done in order to avoid it? It’s scary to go down this road. It does trigger some intense conversations. What it does not is increase the chances of getting divorced (just like talking about death will not kill you…). If anything, it helps to be more mindful and to take more responsibility for the family system that we are building.
As of now, some risks we have identified include:
- taking each other for granted
- different ways of showing and accepting love (i.e. love languages like physical touch vs. gifts vs. acts of service etc.)
- my issues of letting myself be seen and loved the way I truly am
- too much hustling and taking life too seriously
- too little hustling (i.e. uneven split of mental load and chores)
This provides us with great opportunities for meaningful conversations, to explore what we really want from life and which needs can be fulfilled outside of our relationship.
Just some food for thought before we are heading into the weekend.
Big hug
Tanja
