when we backcast and imagine the things that went right, we reveal the problems if those things didn’t go right. Backcasting doesn’t, therefore, ignore the negative space so much as it overrepresents the positive space. It’s in our optimistic nature (and natural in backcasting) to imagine a successful future. Without a premortem, we don’t see as many paths to the future in which we don’t reach our goals. A premortem forces us to build out that side of the tree where things don’t work out. In the process, we are likely to realize that’s a pretty robust part of the tree.
