Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that whenever you are about to begin a project,
Speaker 1: think about the end of it. Today's tip, like some
Speaker 1: other recent ones, was inspired by the book The Friction Project,
Speaker 1: How Smart Leaders make the right things easier and the
Speaker 1: wrong things harder. In this book, authors and Stanford professors
Speaker 1: Robert Sutton and Huggy Row talk about how organizational friction
Speaker 1: can slow down productive output. However, in certain situations, they
Speaker 1: note friction is good. Slowing things down can help teams
Speaker 1: make better decisions. One form of good friction is pausing
Speaker 1: before you start a project to think about how it
Speaker 1: might end. Team members can project themselves into the future
Speaker 1: and envision two scenarios, the project's success and the project's failure.
Speaker 1: The imagined future success is a pre victoriam, if you will,
Speaker 1: and the imagined failure is a pre mortem. Now you've
Speaker 1: probably heard of a post mortem. That's Latin for after death.
Speaker 1: You can examine a project after it is over to
Speaker 1: understand what worked, what didn't, and why. This can be
Speaker 1: a very valuable practice. But why wait to consider what
Speaker 1: leads to a project's success or failure until after the
Speaker 1: project is over. Sutton and Rouse suggest inviting the team
Speaker 1: to time travel before a project begins and imagine the
Speaker 1: project's success. What events and behaviors led to that success.
Speaker 1: The team can then plan the project to make sure
Speaker 1: to build in those key factors. Sutton and Rao also
Speaker 1: advise imagining the project as a total failure. This would
Speaker 1: be the pre mortem, what happened that led to the
Speaker 1: failure and how can we avoid that? In real life.
Speaker 1: When each team member tells the story of the events
Speaker 1: that led to the victory and of the events that
Speaker 1: led to the failure, the team is positioned to avoid
Speaker 1: the bad stuff and embrace the good. Sutton and Raw's
Speaker 1: advice about thinking about endings from the beginning got me
Speaker 1: thinking about my recent conversation with Emily P. Freeman, host
Speaker 1: of The Next Right Thing podcast and author of the
Speaker 1: book How to Walk Into a Room. When I interviewed
Speaker 1: her for my other podcast, Best of Both Worlds, Freeman
Speaker 1: noted that even though we don't think about it all
Speaker 1: that much, pretty much everything in our lives will end
Speaker 1: at some point, so we would be wise to think
Speaker 1: about that. Endings can be good or bad or neutral,
Speaker 1: but often we have some say over that matter, so
Speaker 1: best to consider the possibilities. I know I have been
Speaker 1: thinking about this with some upcoming projects in my life.
Speaker 1: Over the next eight months or so, my oldest child
Speaker 1: will be applying to college. Eventually this process will be over.
Speaker 1: To me. Success is that he is happy with the
Speaker 1: outcome and that he felt supported during the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So that is how everything needs to be considered. What
Speaker 1: about you? What are you starting? How will it end?
Speaker 1: By thinking about this ahead of time, we might be
Speaker 1: able to shape the narratives in ways that make success
Speaker 1: far more likely. In the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.