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Your SWOT Analysis might be Useless. Run a "Pre-Mortem" Instead. 💀 Think about your next big launch. Everyone's excited. The energy is high. Someone fills out a SWOT analysis that says "strong competition" under 'Threats'. Everyone nods and moves on. This is how projects fail. You're not surfacing the real risks because no one wants to be the negative person who kills the optimistic vibe. Here’s a simple, powerful exercise that bypasses this problem entirely. It’s called a Pre-Mortem. The 1-Hour Exercise That Can Save a 6-Month Project: 👍🏻 Gather the Team: Get everyone involved in the project in a room. 👍🏻 Set the Scene: Clearly state the plan. "We are launching our new feature on September 1st." 👍🏻 Ask the Magic Question: Now, say this: "Imagine it's six months from now. The launch has failed spectacularly. It was a total disaster. Take 10 minutes and write down every single reason you can think of for why it failed." Why This is a Game-Changer: ✅ It Makes Pessimism Productive: Suddenly, the "negative" person in the room becomes the most valuable. You're not criticizing a plan; you're performing a fictional autopsy. It gives everyone permission to voice their deepest anxieties constructively. 🧠 ✅ It Unlocks Brutal Honesty: The question isn't "What could go wrong?" It's "What did go wrong?" This subtle shift in tense is pure genius. It frees people from the social pressure of having to be optimistic and allows them to talk about potential failures as if they are already facts. ✅ It Turns Vague Fears into Actionable Risks: "I'm worried about the marketing" becomes... "We failed because our launch ads were drowned out by the noise of the T20 World Cup, and our target audience wasn't even listening." Now you have a specific risk you can plan for. After everyone has their list, go around the room and consolidate all the reasons for failure. Group them, prioritise them, and assign owners to mitigate the most critical risks. Stop asking your team to predict problems. Start asking them to tell the story of a failure. You'll be amazed at what you uncover.