Episode Details

You've launched things that seemed solid, only to watch them unravel for reasons that felt obvious afterward. That's not a judgment problem. For ADHD founders, retrospective clarity comes naturally. The pre-mortem is a tool that pulls that clarity forward, to the start of a project, when fixing problems is still cheap.

Skye and Robbie break down the pre-mortem method, developed by cognitive psychologist Gary Klein and later popularized by Daniel Kahneman, and explain why it fits ADHD-wired brains in particular. ADHD founders tend to communicate broad vision without the full set of dependencies, leaving teams misaligned and triggering micromanagement loops. They're also prone to hyperfocused tunneling in the wrong direction. The pre-mortem interrupts both patterns before they cost you.

They also cover how to use it as a minimum viable test. Before a prototype, before a hire, before a pivot, spend an afternoon stress-testing the idea. Sometimes the right output is: don't do this.

What We Cover

• Why ADHD founders naturally access retrospective clarity, and how to use it at project start instead of after the fact
• How incomplete vision communication creates micromanagement loops, and what the pre-mortem does to close that gap
• The novelty bias and hyperfocus tunneling problem, and why planning for failure acts as a directional check
• How to run a pre-mortem solo, with a team, or with AI, including a specific reverse prompting approach
• Why a half-day pre-mortem with AI or a mentor counts as your minimum viable test before any build

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