Prospective Hindsight
Imagining a future event as having already occurred (prospective hindsight) improves the ability to generate specific, relevant reasons for its occurrence, enabling better planning and risk mitigation.
THE IDEA
Prospective Hindsight
Consider this hypothetical exercise: it is November 2020, and the United States has just elected its first Asian American president. Think about all the reasons why this might have happened.
Russo and Schoemaker have found that when people use “prospective hindsight” to work backward from a certain future, they are better at generating explanations for why the event might happen. You may have experienced this yourself. Treating the imagined event as settled can feel more concrete, offering firmer cognitive footholds.
In the original study of prospective hindsight, researchers presented participants with a description of an employee who’d just started a new job, including a quick sketch of the relevant company and industry. Half the participants were asked to generate plausible reasons why the employee might quit six months from now. On average, they generated 3.5 reasons each.
The other half were told to use the hindsight approach: Imagine that it’s six months from now and the employee has just quit. Why did he quit? In this group, participants generated 4.4 reasons apiece, about 25% more than the other group, and their reasons tended to be more specific and relevant to the scenario presented. Prospective hindsight seems to spur more insights because it forces us to fill in the blanks between today and a certain future event (as opposed to the slipperier process of speculating about an event that may or may not happen).
The psychologist Gary Klein, inspired by this research, devised a method for testing decisions that he calls the “premortem.” A postmortem analysis begins after a death and asks, “What caused it?” A premortem, by contrast, imagines the future “death” of a project and asks, “What killed it?” A team running a premortem analysis starts by assuming a bleak future: Okay, it’s 12 months from now, and our project was a total fiasco. It blew up in our faces. Why did it fail?
Everyone on the team takes a few minutes to write down every conceivable reason for the project’s failure. Then the team leader goes around the table, asking each person to share a single reason, until all the ideas have been shared. Once all the threats have been surfaced, the project team can adapt its plans to forestall as many of the negative scenarios as possible. The exercise gives the team specific failure scenarios to address before work begins.
When to use it
Risk management in business: Before launching a product, a team runs a premortem to identify and mitigate potential failures.
Career planning: Imagine looking back from a future where you regret a decision; use those insights to choose your next steps.
Personal goals: When setting a goal, work backward from success by asking what steps and conditions would have led to that outcome.
Decision-making under uncertainty: Use prospective hindsight to evaluate multiple possible futures and prepare for them.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Employee Turnover Study
In a study, participants were given a description of a new employee and the company. Half were asked to list reasons why the employee might quit in six months (average: 3.5 reasons). The other half used prospective hindsight: 'Imagine it’s six months from now and the employee has quit. Why?' They generated an average of 4.4 reasons, which were also more specific and relevant.
Project Premortem
A team about to launch a project conducts a premortem. They assume the project has failed in 12 months and brainstorm every possible reason for failure. These reasons are then addressed in the planning process to reduce risks.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
Think of a current project you are involved in. Imagine it has failed six months from now. What specific factors could have caused that failure?
How might you apply prospective hindsight to a personal goal, such as learning a new skill or improving a relationship?
What are the potential downsides of only focusing on positive outcomes when planning? How can prospective hindsight address that?
Often confused with
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Decisive How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (Chip Heath)