The Anti-Patterns Section

Module 6 · Section 5 of 8

The Anti-Patterns Section

The skill explicitly calls out what not to do:

Anti-pattern	Problem	Instead
Blame assignment	Creates defensiveness, misses systemic issues	Focus on process, not people
Single-cause thinking	Oversimplifies, misses contributing factors	Use 5 Whys, identify multiple factors
Recommendation without action	Lessons forgotten, issue recurs	Implement fixes during retrospective
Vague fixes	”Be more careful” doesn’t prevent recurrence	Encode specific, verifiable changes
Skip verification	No way to know if fix worked	Define success criteria and review date

“Be more careful” is not a fix. A guard in the skill file is a fix. The distinction between the two is what separates a retrospective that produces change from one that produces a document.