“It is nearly impossible to have your best idea the first time you think about something.
The most likely way to uncover important insights is to frequently revisit a problem. The longer you’re in the game, the more ideas bubble up to the surface.
The core of strategy work is always the same: discovering the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.
whenever something isn’t working, I put my best A players on it immediately because I want to decide as fast as possible whether it’s an execution problem or an idea problem.
Usually they are half-day to day-long sessions, depending on the complexity of the project. And they are done after the decision is made to proceed with project. Premortems are not designed to change the decision about whether to do the project but to mitigate risk factors. That changes the incentives for people. The basic format is listing the... See more