S15. Plan with a premortem
Identify potential problems before they occur. Planning for failure strengthens the chances of success.
Resources to support growth in this behaviour
Whether this behaviour has been chosen through Step 1. Diagnose, highlighted through reflection or coaching, or identified as a school or trust priority, you can now follow the steps below to develop and embed it in your daily leadership practice.
Step 2. Learn: Read Everyone Succeeds: 54 Leadership Behaviours to Transform Your School to understand what great leadership looks like in practice. Each behaviour is grounded in research and real examples from schools and businesses.
Step 3. Reflect: Use the Everyone Succeeds Workbook to apply ideas to your own context.
Guided reflection, practical actions, and space for planning turn understanding into improvement.
Step 4. Apply: Work through the Leadership Toolkit for this behaviour. Use the Plan with a Premortem toolkit to imagine a project has failed, identify the reasons, and strengthen your plan before implementation begins.
Step 5. Coach and practice: Use the Plan with a premortem Coach and Practise Frameworks to strengthen the behaviour through action steps that surface risk and coaching questions about failure points, rehearsing defensive planning so problems are prevented rather than managed later.
These can be used individually or with colleagues to embed key behaviours.
Step 6. Plan: Set measurable goals using the 90 Day Leadership Planner.
Turn improvement into action by tracking your focus and progress over time, with completed examples for different career stages.
Step 7. Lead: Apply your learning to real situations through the Scenario Finder.
Over fifty scenarios link directly to the behaviours that help you solve the challenges that matter most in your school.
One book suggestion
Sources of Power– Gary Klein (1998).
This text strengthens the behaviour by demonstrating how anticipating failure in advance leads to better planning, sharper insight and reduced risk. Buy the book.
References from the Everyone Succeeds book
Heath, C. and Heath, D. (2013). Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work. Random House.
Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review 85(9): 18-19.
L David Marquet (2013). Turn the ship around! : a true story of building leaders by breaking the rules. London: Portfolio Penguin.