Here are 30 things groups do to make collaborative conversations dysfunctional. These are also 30 things that don't happen when we use the Agile Canvas because the model is specifically designed to prevent these.
- Discussing and debating assumptions and opinions
- Allowing scope creep to prevent closure on anything
- Immediately discrediting and dismissing new ideas in their seedling stages
- Wasting time watching a few do work in front of many
- Getting updates that could be in a shared doc or email
- Creating agendas where items are subjects rather than questions
- Taking time to review what people received prior and failed to preview
- Allowing anyone to dominate or disappear
- Encouraging or allowing people to overcommit to anything
- Getting negative with or ignoring negative people
- Postponing possible action until we get missing resources or assurances
- Competing for the prize of being right or in control
- Assuming any one of us could be ultimately smarter than all of us
- Allowing things to get spoken without being recorded
- Having one person do the recording of others' contributions
- Using emails rather than shared docs to organize any kind of collaboration
- Treating confident opinions as facts
- Allowing people to assign tasks to others
- Trying to reach consensus without first establishing shared operating principles
- Allowing or encouraging the whole group to do anything that a subgroup could do
- Assuming that quality of decisions and quantity of people involved are correlated
- Defining realistic and unrealistic on our emotions, assumptions and beliefs
- Trying to create a plan that we don't have to change
- Excluding our networks as sources of new resources and support
- Allowing the same people to silo into the same assignments all the time
- Defining objectives in fuzzy, vague or ambiguous terms
- Doing planning from a belief that planning can create a knowable future
- Allowing people to take on tasks without conversation about estimated time requirements
- Hoping we interact with trust without taking time to explicitly build trust
- Spending more time talking about what we do know than what we don't