At the start of a project, optimism is not just common; it is socially enforced. The kickoff is a celebration. The plan is exciting. Anyone who raises a serious doubt risks being seen as negative, or not a team player, or insufficiently committed. So the doubts do not disappear. They go underground. Several people in the room privately suspect exactly why the thing might fail, and none of them say it, and six months later everyone expresses surprise at the problem they all saw coming.

The premortem is the simplest countermeasure I know. Before starting, gather the team and ask them to assume the project has already failed, completely, a year from now. Then ask each person to write down why. The framing matters enormously. Asking "what could go wrong?" invites people to defend the plan. Asking "it failed, what happened?" gives them permission to say what they already think, because they are no longer criticising the plan; they are explaining a history. The result is almost always a list of risks that were entirely foreseeable and that nobody had mentioned, including a few that everyone privately recognises as the real ones.

The technique is cheap, takes an hour, and works on personal decisions just as well as on projects. You will not remove all risk, and you should not try to. But you will stop being surprised by the problems you could have named in advance. So, as a reflection for today: what is the most likely reason your current project fails? And who on your team knows it but has not yet said so?