What is it?

A workshop process to help your team stop doing the things they hate by identifying and setting anti-goals.

Why is it useful?

If your team stops doing things they don’t want to happen, it frees up time to focus on what gives the most pleasure and impact.

To remove actions and tasks from your team’s calendar and to-do list.

Brainstorm what you don’t like doing as a team. Start with the prompt “We don’t like ...”
These might be tasks that are annoying, time-consuming, or have little impact on KPIs.

Examples:

For each “bad” task, create a solution starting with “We’re not going to...” or “We won’t...”
Fix the root causes rather than the symptoms (you can use a root cause analysis method like Five Why’s if needed).

Examples:

We don’t like everyone being obligated to attend weekly strategy meetings → We won’t attend regular meetings as a team anymore. Instead, we’ll send a representative if attendance is required.
We don’t like long virtual meetings → We won’t have virtual meetings that last longer than 30 mins.
We don’t like calling unhappy customers only to be shouted at → We won’t call customers until support provides a solution we know will work.

Examples:

We won’t attend regular meetings as a team anymore. Instead, we’ll send a representative if attendance is required → Assess each meeting to see if attendance is necessary. Send 1 person if it is, rotating weekly.
We won’t have virtual meetings that last longer than 30 mins → Eliminate all meetings longer than 30 mins from our calendar.
We won’t call customers until support provides a solution → Work with support to create a new process that ensures a solution is ready before calls are made.

Take action on the agreed “Hows”.
Removing these tasks will free up time for higher-impact, more enjoyable work, leading to better results.