I recently came across Tim Harford's great Cautionary Tales podcast. As Harford states, it's about "telling true stories about mistakes and what we should learn from them."
A very recent episode was particularly interesting from a risk management perspective: The Vigilante and the Air Traffic Controller. What happens when you have two ways of warning pilots they're about to crash into each other, and pilots aren't sure which one to act upon?
As described in the podcast, people die.
This really stood out to be as a superb example of where the most basic "pre-mortem" would have identified the potential for accidents and death, and could have avoided multiple tragedies.
Why don't we do pre-mortems for all kinds of things? This is a question to which I haven't been able to find a good answer!
Want to learn more about "pre-mortems." Check out the Pre-Mortem Insights Page in the Climate Web.
