Learning guide and study notes
What if we did not do this? Use it to compare action, inaction and failure paths.
Counterfactual thinking tests a proposed choice against realistic alternatives—including the true cost of doing nothing and a structured premortem of how the preferred plan could fail—before committing resources.
Counterfactuals compare a chosen path with plausible alternatives. A premortem is one exercise: imagine the plan failed, then inspect why before committing.
Work through these steps in order, applying the tools above. Write down the answer to each step before moving on.
Define what would likely happen without the proposed action; do not assume inaction has no cost. [1] Source: Harvard Business Review — Performing a Project Premortem (opens in a new tab)
At a fixed future date, assume the plan failed; independently list plausible causes and compare alternatives. [1] Source: Harvard Business Review — Performing a Project Premortem (opens in a new tab)
Turn the strongest causes into tests, mitigations or a changed recommendation. [2] Source: CIA — A Tradecraft Primer (opens in a new tab)
Write a do-nothing path, then assume your preferred option failed in six months; list three causes you can test today.
Situation: A database migration is proposed.
How to apply: Compare doing nothing, migrating now and a staged move; imagine a failed migration caused by hidden dependencies.
Outcome: Test dependency and rollback assumptions before selecting the timing.
Situation: Six months after adding a manual change-review board, the team celebrates having zero major outages.
How to apply: Ask the counterfactual: how many submitted changes were actually modified or rejected by the board versus caught earlier by automated staging tests?
Outcome: Discover the board rubber-stamped 99% of tickets while automated tests caught the bugs; streamline the board and strengthen automated checks.
Situation: An infrastructure team is confident in a weekend cutover plan for core routing.
How to apply: Run a 20-minute premortem: “It is Monday morning and the cutover had to be aborted—what went wrong?” Surfacing out-of-band console access depending on the very network being cut over.
Outcome: Verify independent out-of-band console paths before the maintenance window begins.
Illustrative examples showing how the lens changes decisions; not measured outcomes.
Watch out: A premortem is structured imagination, not evidence that the imagined failure will occur.
Combine this lens with others rather than relying on it alone. Browse all thinkings
To judge an action’s effect, compare what happened with a plausible alternative under comparable conditions.
Use a problem of your own. Write a short answer to each prompt, then return after trying the method.
Answer from memory before opening the suggested answer.
Not alone. Traffic, other changes, or regression to the mean may explain the change. Compare against a credible no-deployment path.
Changing unrelated assumptions to make the preferred action look good. Keep conditions comparable and explain unavoidable differences.
These sources support the method; the examples and exercises are original teaching illustrations.