Brought to you by Boost in collaboration with North Cumbria Knowledge and Library Service, this LUNCH & LEARN session on 29 April 2026 saw Lisa Jones (Assistant Director for Integrated Commissioning, Sunderland City Council) deliver a presentation on ‘Learning from failure, before it happens: the Sunderland approach’.
This session explored how Sunderland City Council used a whole‑system pre‑mortem to stress‑test their neighbourhood health programme before implementation.
Instead of asking what might go wrong, the team intentionally imagined the programme had already failed – and worked backwards to uncover the real risks, blind spots, and assumptions that could derail success.
Lisa shared why this proactive approach was chosen, how it helped surface the “invisible elephants” in the system, and the powerful effect it had on partners’ willingness to challenge the status quo. Attendees were walked through the methods, tools, and facilitation techniques used on the day, including how they processed insights from over 130 participants and transformed an “inverse logic model” of failure into a roadmap for success.
Learn how pre‑mortems cut through optimism bias, flatten hierarchy, and create a safe space for candid system‑wide reflection – and gain practical ideas you can apply to stress‑test and strengthen your own improvement work.
Access the Facilitator Premortem Guide, kindly put together by Lisa.
Take a look at the recordings of our previous LUNCH & LEARN sessions here, and our upcoming dates here…
If you would like to present and share your innovations/improvements across a wider platform, please get in touch.
