Paul Sonkin
Co-author with Klein and Johnson on applying pre-mortems to investment analysis (as introduced on this podcast)
aka Paul Salkin, Paul Sunken
“So that knowledge is in the group, at the tip of their tongue. They're thinking about all through them, planning meetings, and nobody brings it up.”
“the most important factor for me is psychological safety.”
Paul Sonkin
One-line summary: Podcast / speaker: argues pre-mortem knowledge is already at the tip of the group's tongue and that psychological safety is the binding constraint.
What they're known for
Co-author (with Klein and Johnson) on applying pre-mortems to investment analysis, as introduced on this podcast. Transcript also garbles the surname (Salkin / Sunken); aliases keep those variants.
Why they matter to psychology
Names psychological safety and “tip of the tongue” knowledge as the reason the ritual works — the group already has the failure modes and will not say them without the frame.
Said
Speaker-attributed claims extracted from diarized sources. Each bullet mirrors one entry in quotes: frontmatter — keep them in sync.
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On pre-mortem-analysis, group-decision-hygiene:
"So that knowledge is in the group, at the tip of their tongue. They're thinking about all through them, planning meetings, and nobody brings it up." — 2026-08-17-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-pre-mortem-analysis-gary-klein (2026-08-17)
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On pre-mortem-analysis, group-decision-hygiene:
"the most important factor for me is psychological safety." — 2026-08-17-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-pre-mortem-analysis-gary-klein (2026-08-17)