The school research lead, premortems and avoiding the avoidable

As we approach the end of the autumn term, plans are no doubt being developed for new initiatives or innovations which are going to be introduced in the New Year.  Unfortunately, the introduction of an initiative, policy or change within a school often results in failure, maybe in part due to individuals not be willing to speak-up about potential problems with the change or intervention, particularly if its is viewed as a headteacher's 'pet-project.'   So to help with this problem, I'm going to use the work of Klein (2007a) who developed a technique called a premortem, and which happens to be one of Daniel Kahneman's favourite approaches to try and increase the quality of decisions within organisations.

What is premortem?

As Klein states : A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows health professionals and the family to learn what caused a patient's death.  Everyone benefits except, of course, the patient.  A premortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so the project can be improved rather than autopsied.  Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the 'patient' has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The team members' task is to generate plausible reasons for the project's failure. (p1)

In the context of a school or MAT a project premortem comes at the beginning of a new initiative - say a new timetabling system or uniform policy - and works out why the new initiative has not delivered the desired for results and has created a number of negative unintended consequences.  In other words, you have imagined the initiative has failed, and is to the withdrawn.

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