Concept
Preparade
A preparade is the mirror image of a premortem: you imagine that a decision has succeeded far beyond your forecast and ask what you would need in place to handle that success.
Chip and Dan Heath introduce the preparade in Decisive as one way to prepare to be wrong. Bookending says the future is a range, not a point. The premortem covers the bad end of that range, and the preparade covers the good end. We rarely plan for success because it doesn't feel like a problem. But success breaks things too. A product sells out with nothing ready to restock. A post goes viral and buries a one-person inbox. A promotion arrives with no one trained to take over your old work. Picturing the celebration a year out and working backward exposes the bottlenecks (supply, staff, cash, your own calendar) while they're still cheap to fix. This isn't optimism. It's readiness, so a plausible upside doesn't turn into a crisis.
A real-life example
Leyla, a ceramicist, booked a holiday market stall and expected to sell 40 mugs. Her preparade question was: "It's late December, we sold 200 mugs and got 30 wholesale inquiries. What had to be ready?" Her answers were a pre-order sheet, a backup kiln slot at a friend's studio and a one-page wholesale price list. She sold 120 mugs, took 60 pre-orders, and didn't lose a single buyer to "sold out."
How to use it
- 1Set the scene: pick a date and picture the decision succeeding wildly but plausibly, say three times your forecast. Write that outcome as a one-line headline.
- 2Ask "What would have broken first?" List the constraints that success would hit: capacity, people, money, time.
- 3Make one cheap preparation for the biggest constraint now, and set a tripwire, a specific number that triggers the larger move.