Kill It with Fire

The way a murder board works is you put together a panel of experts who will ask questions, challenge assumptions, and attempt to poke holes in a plan or proposal put in front of them by the person or group the murder board exercise is intended to benefit. It’s called a murder board because it’s supposed to be combative. The experts aren’t just trying to point out flaws in the proposal; they are trying to outright murder the ideas. Murder boards are one of those techniques that are really appropriate only in specific circumstances. To be a productive and beneficial exercise, it is essential that the murder board precedes an extremely stressful event. Murder boards have two goals. The first is to prepare candidates for a stressful event by making sure they have an answer for every question, a response to every concern, and mitigation strategy for every foreseeable problem. The second goal of a murder board is to build candidates’ confidence. If they go into the stressful event knowing that they survived the murder board process, they will know that every aspect of their plan or testimony has been battle-tested.