 The mic, so I'll do it first. I'm Doc. I am co-founder of Anbole. We do agile consulting. And glad to be here. This is my fourth or fifth time at Agile India. Always enjoyed this conference. He's a seasoned professional. This is my very first time in the great country of India. So thank you for having me. I am also co-founder of Anbole. I spent many years as a business analyst. Now as a coach, very much focused on helping groups of people collaborate, communicate better. This tool that we're going to talk about today illustrates one way that we can do that. We're going to talk about decision making, basically. I'll just keep going here. So think about in your daily life. On a regular basis, with your teams, you have lots of decisions to make, or someone on your team has decisions to make. And we want you to think for a second. There's paper on the tables. There's also some large post-its. Let's save those for another thing that we're going to do. So if you can grab a piece of paper and a pen and jot down types of decisions that you might make on your team, just examples of things on a regular basis, the types of things that you are having to either make on your own. So we'll give you a minute to do that. OK. Now looking at those decisions, we want you to think about what challenges you might have in those decisions. What kinds of things prevent you from making those decisions? What kinds of things would be an obstacle that makes it difficult to make those decisions? And jot down some of those, just a separate list or right next to those, whatever you're comfortable with. OK, finish the one that you're working on now. There's a seat up here. There's actually one more up here if anyone else comes in. OK, so now that you've got a few decisions, a few challenges, we want you to pair up with the person next to you and share those decisions and challenges. Just take a couple of minutes to share with your neighbor. If you're at an odd number, we can do groups of three. And just take a few minutes to share with your neighbor. OK, if you haven't switched partners, make sure the other person gets a chance to share theirs as well. It's like someone had my timer already set for me. OK. Now that you've had a chance to share with your table, we would love to hear a couple of examples. Who wants to share some of the challenges that they're facing with teams? Any volunteers this morning? OK, yes. What is it? OK, prioritization. OK, so having multiple meetings and trying to prioritize between different meetings and different tasks. You had something? Sure, sure, hiring decisions. And that was too much for me to repeat. But I appreciate you sharing. I think everyone heard you in the room. And I'll pass the mic. If someone has one more we want to share. It's the impact, the trade-offs associated with the decision-making. Do you always have more than one right answer? Which one to choose? Which one will have the appropriate impact, which serves the best for the organization and the team? That's a big constraint in the decision-making. Thank you. Thank you all for sharing. So one of the things that comes up often when we talk about, especially decisions on a team and trying to make team-level decisions, one of the questions that ends up coming up is actually, should we involve everyone in a decision, everyone on the team? And I'm going to walk you through a scenario. You may have experienced something like this. This group of people is actually considering getting chairs for their office. They have decided they want to buy new office chairs. And the conversation begins. And it kind of continues along these lines. Now, as you look at this conversation, what are some things that you notice, if anything? What do you notice in this? So everybody's got their own opinion, right? So we've got a bunch of different opinions represented. Can you guys read this? Yeah. What else do we notice? So differences in thought process, absolutely. So we're coming at it from different angles. Maybe we're thinking about different priorities. Is there anything else that stands out? I miss that. Everyone's looking for their own comfort zone. So we said, yeah, yeah. So one of the things that always stands out for me when I look at this, of course it does for me, because I made this slide, but in many conversations, I've experienced this exact thing. What's this person saying? I don't care. Doesn't matter to me. Okay. So personally, I had an experience where it was a startup and all of our software developers were out in the field. They were all working at clients and we decided that we wanted to open a studio. So we were gonna bring a bunch of the developers in and we were gonna start writing custom software for our customers. So we're all on hip chat because back then that's what we used. And I asked the question, what type of keyboards do we want to use in the studio? And someone threw out, oh, the Mac keyboards are the best and there's a whole bunch of chatter. And then someone said, oh, the Mac keyboards with the extension for the numeric keypad, a bunch of chatter. And this guy came in and goes, well, I don't really care, but we could all use Microsoft keyboards. And then, lots of chatter. It starts to die down. And this same guy comes back and he goes, it doesn't matter to me, but, and he made some other suggestion. And there's a bunch of chatter again. So I direct messaged him and I said, what's going on? He said, what do you mean what's going on? I said, you keep saying you don't care. He's like, well, I don't care. Why don't you care, first of all? He said, well, I have carpal tunnel syndrome and I hand built my own keyboard. Whatever you put in the studio, when I show up, I'm gonna unplug whatever you give me and plug in my custom keyboard. So I literally don't care what you put in the studio. Okay, then why are you in this conversation? And he said, because we're all in the conversation. Realize that sometimes we don't want everyone involved in the discussion. Not everyone needs to be there. And that's one of the important elements of this technique. It's a way to allow people to opt in and out of decisions and be explicit about it. Sometimes we have these situations where no matter what we say, the boss is gonna come in and just tell us what we're gonna do. So why even bother to have the conversation? And that's okay. There are situations when that's appropriate. Sometimes there is one person who is equipped with everything they need to make the decision. So why do we need to go to a meeting to talk about it? Just let that person make that decision. And that's some of what we're gonna uncover today. So this is gonna be fairly interactive. I'm going to, at the moment, assign each of you a certain role. So bear with me as we figure this out. I would like the person who's sitting closest to the door to stand up. It's only for a moment. You're all gonna get a chance to stand up. So don't think. At each table. At each table. Yes, sorry. That's an important distinction. So if everyone closest to the door, someone at your table, just stand up. You're the first person, the first role we're going to assign. We just need, yeah, one per table. Don't worry, you're not gonna have to do anything. This is just to help me figure out to make sure we have one person at each table. So you are now being hired as the product manager. Okay, so remember the role that I'm giving you. You're the product manager. You're in charge of the overall product strategy, market fit. You've got some product owners that you manage and they work on specific aspects of this product that we're gonna be talking about today. And you like to be in charge. You're very much, you're competent, you're really good at your job and you like having that authority, okay? You can have a seat. Now the person to their left, if you could please stand up. Sure, I get all these. Okay, so you are the product owner. You report to that product manager. You work with the teams directly to implement some solutions. You take direction for the product manager, but you have some authority on your own to make decisions with writing stories, prioritization of the backlog, kind of typical product owner stuff. You're there to support the teams kind of on a regular basis, okay? All right, continuing on to their left. Thank you. All right, here's our dev managers. So you are in charge of all the developers. You've got a small group of, let's say seven or eight developers that report directly to you. You manage everything that they do. You used to write code, but you don't anymore because you're too busy doing all this manager stuff, but the direct reports still rely on you for the day-to-day stuff, okay? You can have a seat. Person to their left. We might just loop around here. You're our testers for our product, okay? You may help some with requirements definition. If you are far along along on your agile journey, you work with automated tests and you do some exploratory testing. So an all-around, all-purpose tester. You can have a seat. The person to their left, if you could stand. Okay, you're our developers. You're the one slinging code on a regular basis. You might be involved in some architecture discussions. They might pull you in, but you're pretty much every day on the team writing code. Unfortunately, you spend a lot of time in meetings that you wouldn't like to. You'd rather be spending time at your desk writing code, but that's just the way the job works. So you can have a seat. Okay, we have a few more roles left, so this table up here, you've got everyone you need, so you're okay with the roles that you have. As long as you have a developer and a tester and some product owner, you're good. So for these additional folks who have stood up. Yep, thank you very much. You're our lead architect. So you're responsible for the overall architecture for our company. You worry about standards, security. Teams might not always be happy to see you coming when you come into meetings. People are a little hesitant sometimes to tell you what's going on, because they're afraid you're gonna tell them they can't do what they wanna do. I've never met an architect like that, but that's hypothetical for the purpose of this session. So you can go ahead and have a seat. And we should have at least one more role, I think, at each table. Go ahead and stand up for me. You're the project managers. You make sure that all the deliverables are clear, that the deadlines are clear for the team. You make sure the team hits their targets, that they meet their velocity goals, and you're the one in charge of all the status reports that have to go to leadership if you're still doing those sort of things. And you do help the team remove roadblocks, try to help them to do their job a little further. You can have a seat. And do we have any one left? If you would like to stand up for a second, let me just christen you as developers as well, because we have lots of software to write, so we're going to ask that you help the developers so you're gonna be in the developer role. These roles will be important as we go through this scenario. So remember sort of who you are and how you might approach this problem that we're gonna be talking about. So let's pretend that we work at this large transportation company, cabs, taxis, that sort of thing. We are in a big city and we wanna differentiate ourselves. With all the competition out there with Lyft and Uber, we've decided we're going to offer an app that allows people to order a cab and a coffee. So when you are taking a cab to work in the morning, you can have your cappuccino at the same time. This is our big idea that we think is going to change the world and differentiate us. Okay, so this is our company. So what we get that kind of in your head, this is this new project, you want to, for the rest of our time here, we're gonna be thinking about a new app that we're gonna build to allow people to order coffee and a cab at the same time, okay? All right, so the first thing I'd like you to do, we'd like you to do, is on the larger post-its here, these three by five, so if we can get these open at all the tables. Just thinking about this app and this product and then your specific role, write down three or four key decisions that would need to be made in order to get this thing off the ground. What are some things that need to happen from your perspective and your role at the company in order to launch this coffee and a cab, a cab and a coffee concept? Again, one per post-it. Yes, yes, yeah, so the logistics of a cab and a coffee, what we're concerned with is we need to write an app where people can actually make this happen, right? So that is our primary focus. Now as product managers and owners, you might be thinking broader in terms of market fit, et cetera, right? It is important that we have just one per post-it. You might be thinking about the infrastructure that's needed, you might be thinking about who are the target customers. All right, why don't we go ahead and finish up whatever one you're on if you're still writing? All right, and once you're set, okay, now what I want you to do at your tables, working together, I want you to just create one list. So just kind of go through them, look at them, remove duplicates and create a list of the decisions that need to be made. For that, as far as our time is concerned. If you've got duplicates, just go ahead and pick one. Yeah, if you've got duplicates, just pick one. Yep, you're gonna try to reduce it down to a single list. So really the majority of this exercise is removing duplicates, right? It's just making sure that if you've got ones that are the same, they're removed. This does not need to be a comprehensive list, nor do you all have to agree on the list. All we're really trying to do is remove duplicate items. Okay, does anyone need more time to read the list, the items? I think we've got all of them kind of generated. We've at least read them all so we know what they are. Now we're gonna go through a quick prioritization so that we stay focused for this session. Okay, so for each of the roles, actually for everyone at the table, what we're gonna do is you're gonna have one turn to pick one of these as your favorite, as the one that you wanna make sure we use for the rest of the exercise. So starting with our product manager, you get to pick first. So whichever decision you think, yes, that one's really important to me, I wanna make sure we talk about that one. And yes. Not necessarily. Yeah, if you heard a wonderful decision that someone else brought up, you can pick that one. So all of the ones in the middle of the table are the pool from which you can pick. So the product manager will go first and then we'll just go left just as we assign the roles. So at the end of this exercise, there will be the number of stickies as there are people at the table. Okay, so this table only has five people. You will have five decisions in the middle of the table. If you have eight people, you will have eight decisions. Does that make sense? Yes. Then pick the next thing that you like the best. Yeah, yes. And it's not like you're taking it. You're still gonna leave it there on the list. Then when we're done, we'll remove the other ones just in an effort to focus in on the top five or eight different decisions, okay? So starting with our product manager, go ahead and pick your favorite. So just choose which one that you can just continue on so you will have six versus... Okay, yes, you wanna end up, oh, you had just as many cards as, oh, well perfect, then they're all prioritized. You didn't have to make any decisions on that. Once you have your prioritized lists, your selection, you can move the other ones off to the side. So clear that space in the middle of your table. You want your list to be to the left, if that makes sense. Whatever way you can read them, make a linear list of them. So someone just asked whether we need to actually order the list that is on the tables. That's less important for this exercise. We're not worried about putting the remaining items you have in any kind of order. We just wanted to narrow it down to the top eight or nine. So clear the space in the middle of your table other than that list. So if you look at the slide up there, you want your list to be on the left-hand side of your table. Okay, looks like everyone's getting there. Okay, the last one up here. All right, so at this point you should have just one single list. It is to the left and you've got a clear space on the center of your table. So that list is the leftmost of that clear space on your table. This will make a little more sense in just a second here. Okay, so collaboration contracts. This is what we're here to talk about anyway. This is what we're gonna be learning for the rest of the day. So let's make it a straight list to the left of the open, there you go. All right, so with a collaboration contract what this is designed to do is a couple of different things. It is designed to help us figure out who is involved in the decisions and how is the decision going to be made. It's, we've found over and over again with groups of people especially, there ends up being these weird dynamics where we get together as a group and we don't understand upfront who needs to be involved so we have maybe too many folks involved or we don't understand and agree upfront how the decision is going to be made. And so we think, some of us think that we are working as a group to come to agreement and some of us think that I am the only decision maker and everybody else is just here to inform me about stuff and things. Awesome. Right at the point where we need it the most. Well, I don't think they did anything, I think it's the TV. Got it. You are so good at these. Okay, so with the collaboration contract what we end up doing is each individual on the team looks at a decision that needs to be made or all of the decisions that needs to be made and they self-select into a role. So when you look at this decision you go, you know, for that decision I believe that I belong in one of these roles and the roles are explain. If you say that you are in the explain role what you're saying is I am the sole decision maker. I alone will make this decision and I will explain my decision to the rest of the group. I don't need their input. I don't need any additional information. I know what I'm doing. This is my decision. If you say you are in the consult role you're saying that you are a sole decision maker. This is my decision and my decision alone. The difference is I'll consult with others before making my decision. So I'd like to get some information from them. I'd like to hear their opinions. I'd like to see what data they have. I will then make the decision and of course explain that decision to the group. You understand the difference between these two? They're both sole decision makers. One of them needs no input from anyone. One of them wants to get some information before they make the decision, okay? If you say that you are in the agree role what this means is I'm a decision maker but I want to be in agreement with others who are also decision makers. We will gather information. We will talk amongst ourselves. We will come to an agreement and that will be the decision. Right, so this is a collective decision making role. If you are in advise you are now saying I don't actually need to be a decision maker. Somebody else can make this decision but I have information or a perspective that I think is valuable and I would like to share that with the decision maker to help inform their decision. Right, if you are in accept you are not a decision maker. You have no information to share and you will accept the decision as made. And if you are in abstain you have no idea why you got invited to this meeting in the first place. This decision has no impact on you. You so not care you don't want to be here at all. But it's possible, right? Every once in a while we end up invited to some meeting and we have no idea why we're there. This has nothing to do with me in any way. So those are the roles. Any questions on these roles? What we're doing is each of us is saying based on this decision, what role do I think I belong in? So let's give an example here. Okay, I don't remember what the scenario is. And I have no notes on it. So here a group of people we've had to make some form of decision needed to be made. Joe indicated that, hey, I'm in consult. It's my decision, but I'm gonna consult with others. Luckily Alison Susan both have some information. So they want to advise Joe before he makes the decision. The rest of the group is either in accept or abstain. Frank doesn't know why he was invited at all, right? Now the way that we do this is we do it anonymously or at least we don't share our answers with the rest of the group until all at once. So right now, I'll hand it to you in a second. You have your list of cards along the left-hand side. What we want you to do is make the headings for each role and place them along the top. So again, using those three by five cards. Okay, so using those larger stickies, make headings so make six different post-its that say each of those words. And you're basically gonna build this on your table. Okay, so you've already got your ideas over here, your decisions, and you're gonna stick headers across the top, yes, exactly. Yep, they're headers, yes, exactly. You're basically building a little matrix. Yes, perfect. Yeah, so write the words, explain on one sticky, consult on a sticky, agree on a sticky, advise on a sticky, and then you're gonna put them across the top. Yeah, and they need to be placed at the very top because we're gonna fill in the center there. Thank you, doc. Yes, we've got some square post-its. We're passing out now. We're gonna use for deciding what we want for each of these decisions. And this seems a little cumbersome the first time you do this. Once people know how to use this technique, it takes minutes to set it up. We've even done it electronically with teams that are distributed. There's different techniques for capturing this information that is kind of fast and easy when we do it electronically. And it is even faster and easier the more times you do it. So I appreciate your patience with just working through the mechanics. Okay, all right, so the next step, and this is an important step, in silence on your own, you are going to make your role selection cards for each of these decisions. So a card will look like this. The number in the upper left-hand corner is the decision that it belongs to. So starting at the top, one, two, three, four, five, however many decisions you have, right? In the middle is your name. Bottom right is the role that you are going to select. Are you explain, consult, agree, advise, right? What role would you select for that specific decision? So you will make as many individual cards as there are decisions on your board. Keep all of the cards to yourself. It's easier to flip that way than it is the other. Okay, just so that everybody can see it, those are the roles and what they mean. And remember, this is for you in your position on this team for this specific decision, where do you think you belong? So as a reminder, you're silently doing this, you're keeping them. If anyone ever in the early days of doing estimation where you're doing a fist of five and you do it all at the same time, we're trying basically to remove anchoring. So if you see someone else put theirs in a certain place, then you might be influenced about what you really want. So we don't reveal our cards. And remember that the left-hand side, the explain, consult, and agree, they're the decision makers. The ones on the right-hand side are support, if you will. They don't make the decisions. Yes, who do not lay the cards out, you should have a little pile in front of you, which is why we have them numbered. So you can remember which thing, which decision you picked which role for. As Diane had pointed out earlier, if someone starts filling out the board, it creates anchoring. Other people look at those answers and they start to think about, oh, maybe that means I should be in some other role. And now we're not getting honest answers. How are we doing? Do folks need more time? Looks like we got a little bit. Yeah, I think the more decisions we have, the harder it is, right? I mean, back here still needs more time. All right, it looks like everybody's ready, except for maybe our largest table back here. Is there any other folks, everybody need more time or are we all set? Okay. Okay, all right. So let me advance the slides forward a bit here. Okay, so that's where we were. Go for it, yep. Okay, so now, again, silently you don't need to discuss this point. Lay out your individual cards in the spots where they go. So for the first decision, Sarah for the first decision was an agree, so she placed her sticky there in the agree, under the agree heading. If there are more than one posted for that area, it's okay, just kind of overlap them. We're not kind of debating anything at this point. We're just kind of revealing now. Okay, looking good. Yeah, so if you need to spread it out across the table, it can make it easier to read. Looking good. Okay. Looks like we're just about finished. Okay, once all of your stickies are placed, go ahead and have a seat. That'll help us know that you've placed all of them and we can talk about the next step. So as you finish, go ahead and look at your map and see if you notice any trends, see where other people have placed things. We're not really debating or discussing at this point, but it gives you a chance to take in what other people might be thinking. Okay, once you've placed your items, go ahead and have a seat. It's interesting to see how the bigger the team, the harder it is, and how that actually reflects our reality. When we have 12 people trying to make a decision, it takes a lot more time than five people trying to make a decision. Okay, we're gonna talk next about how to deal with conflicts we might see on this. No, it can work for big teams, too. Definitely, it actually is more helpful for big teams than it is for small. And it's more helpful for multiple decisions versus just one. And we'll go through that a little bit as we roll forward, right? Okay, so it looks like most of the tables have theirs laid out fairly well. So the way that it should look basically is you've got idea one. Along that column, all of the one answers, right? Then you've got idea two. Along that row, all of the two answers, right? So it should be fairly easy to read as you look at it. You can see who selected what role for which of the decisions, right? So let's take a look at this. You may have already noticed a couple of things about this as you look at your board. There might be situations you're looking at, going, hmm, how is that possible? Well, it might be that it's not possible. One of the things that collaboration contracts reveals for us is conflicts in our expectations of decision-making. So we're in this group meeting. We need to make some decisions. I think I'm the sole decision-maker because I'm the boss around here and no one knows better than me. And you think that we should be in agreement. If we haven't had that discussion, what happens? We start to have some really weird dynamics, right? I feel like you're not letting things move forward because you're being resistant. You feel like I'm being overbearing because we haven't created this understanding. So collaboration contracts, we do it this way, can reveal conflicts. So let's take a look at this particular situation. If we look at this situation, it doesn't matter what the decision is, do we see any kind of an issue with this? Yes, it's not that I don't have a decision-maker, it's that I have multiple decision-makers and they're in conflict. So I've got Joe thinks that he is the sole decision-maker. I will make this decision on my own. Alice says, I am also a decision-maker and I want to be in agreement with Joe. Well, Joe can't make the decision on his own if Alice needs to be in agreement with him. We can't have both of those things. So what might we do to resolve this particular situation? What needs to happen? Any ideas? Sure, okay, so we gotta talk about it. But from a role's perspective, what needs to happen? That's great. So what you're saying is that hierarchically within the organization, someone should or shouldn't have this role, right? Right now, Joe thinks he's a sole decision-maker. Alice thinks that we need to be in agreement. How that's resolved, whether it's because, hey, hierarchy says Joe's the boss, so Alice, go pound salt, or? Yeah, so it may be appropriate that Joe is the sole decision-maker. That's fine. What needs to happen? Right, not, not, not. We need clarity. How do we get that clarity? Either Joe needs to move down into agree, and says, yes, Alice, you and I can agree on this decision, or Alice needs to move down into advise. She needs to say, hey, you know what? It makes sense that Joe actually makes this decision. I trust him, but I have some information that he might want in order to make that decision. Now, we've got clarity, right? Why we did it, if it's because Joe's in a particular role or whatever, that's a separate item and it needs to be figured out. But it's once we've had that discussion, and Alice moves down into advise in this particular case, it is now Joe can be the sole decision-maker, and we don't get that weird dynamic between people where one of us thinks one thing and one of us thinks the other, right? So there's actually a number of possibilities here. This chart's a little difficult to read, but it actually makes a lot of sense once you get looking at it. For any set of decisions, for any decision, if you have one person in explain, you cannot have anybody in consult, agree, or advise, you can have one or more people in accept and zero or more people in abstain. This makes sense, if you've got a sole decision-maker, you can't have another sole decision-maker, nor can you have group decision-makers, and if it's the person who's going to explain and needs no input from anyone, then there are no advisors, because I ain't listening anyway. If someone is in consult, you cannot have anyone in agree or explain, but you can and need at least one person in advise, and then accept and abstain can have as many people as they want, zero or more. Does it make sense? You can have two or more people in agree, at which point the rest, these rolls down here can have zero or more in them, and then all of these are, whoops, no one's a decision-maker, that's also a problem, and believe it or not, it happens on occasion. There are things that we need to decide, and it turns out that everybody's in advise and accept, and no one's gonna make the decision, and that's a conversation that needs to happen as well. So what we'd like you to do, using this as your guide, look at your boards, and just on the first one, are there any conflicts? And if there are, what would need to happen to resolve that conflict? You don't have to actually have the debate and resolve it. Just want you to have discussion about what would need to happen to resolve it. What are ways that this could happen? Someone can move to this roll or that roll, right? And then go down to your second one. Yeah, and just to add to that, as you're trying to figure it out, think about your role that you're playing. So to your point about who's the most appropriate person to make that decision, let that be your guide, as you're trying to solve the conflict, think about who's the most appropriate person to make that decision. I think so too. Yes, thank you. I was just telling you about that. Yeah, so you want to do the next one. Yeah, I'll just talk to you. Yeah, I'll just talk to you about this roll first. Yeah, go for it. Okay, if we can have everyone have a seat, we're having some great conversations, lots of great ideas coming forward here. We just want to, excuse me, go over a couple of things because we've only got about 10 minutes left. Okay, so in this first row, we had talked about how there couldn't be someone in agree and consult. We showed you that chart, it's all about numbers and you can't have people in all these roles. There's another thing that came up in a lot of the discussions that we just want to summarize. In this example, we've got a whole bunch of people in agree and we look at that and just names, we think, okay, there's no conflict here. But what if the decision we're making has to do with the product we're developing and Susan is the product manager? We might look at that and say, okay, Susan, we kind of want you to help with the decision. That's sort of your job. We want her to either move into agree or to slide up here into consult or explain. Sometimes we notice things when we do these agreements that don't make sense to us because we're looking for leadership. We're looking for someone to kind of step up. Did you go ahead and advance? So we might decide that once a couple of people hear that Susan is gonna, okay, she's gonna take care of this, she's gonna move up into agree, they might slide down and be like, okay, you know what, I don't have to be there. If Susan's gonna be there, then I don't have to be there. We need to get comfortable trusting other people to take care of the decision. Right now I'm working at a company where everyone goes to every meeting and it is, as you can imagine, very ineffective. Many times someone's sitting in a meeting on their laptop working on something else because they feel like if they don't go to this meeting they're gonna be missing something but yet they don't really participate in the meeting that they're in. So what we're trying to create is an environment where it's okay to not attend. It's okay because you know you can go to Susan. She's gonna take care of this for this decision so you don't have to participate in every single meeting. So a couple of things came up while we're going around the tables. So we looked at the different forms of conflicts, we looked at how they might be resolved. You know, a couple of things came up where people were asking me things like, hey, shouldn't we look at the hierarchy of the role to determine who should be a sole decision maker or not when we have conflicts? My answer to that is I don't know. I don't know because I don't know your environment. We don't know your place of work and the culture that is there. So in some organizations, knowledge is more important than hierarchy. So your role is less important than the knowledge that you have and that would influence who might be sole decision maker or an agree. In other organizations, hierarchy is more important than knowledge. My role makes me the decision maker, right? So we can't answer that for you. What this tool is intended to do is help you establish a decision-making protocol and help to reveal those issues that otherwise surface after decisions are supposedly made, right? How many times are we in a situation where the decision's made and then someone else passively, aggressively goes off and does something completely different? Or there's some kind of back channel, back office discussion that's happening. Those are all a result of a lack of clarity from the onset where someone thinks they're sole decision maker, someone thinks they're an agree, we don't talk through it and it manifests in some other way. So we can't really tell you how to solve those conflicts. We can only show you that those conflicts exist and then in your organization, you gotta figure out what's right for us in terms of how we resolve those. Does that make sense? I have my opinions about it, but I can't tell you what to do. Okay, so with our last couple of minutes, take out a piece of paper if you would. I want you to think about how you could use this on your real team. So you're a little fake team today with your assigned roles. Think about situations that you might be able to use this with your real team. We'll give you just a minute or two to write that down. Okay, now while you're writing, I'll say what you to think about. What are some of the things you learned today? Write down anything that comes to mind, any aha moments where you realized something that you didn't know when you came in, something you heard that maybe triggered a new idea for you. Jot down a couple of those. Okay, let's take a few minutes and share out some of that. So what might be a situation that you would use this with your real team in real life? Yeah, so first of all, I would like to share this session overview with my team. And instead of having, so I'll go with these exercises in the session. And when we'll be having actual meeting in that meeting, I'll ask the team that before coming to meeting, analyze yourself, what is your bucket? Based on the agenda, read the agenda. And before you join the meeting, bucketize yourself in maybe agree, accept somewhere so that you don't, we do that meeting efficiently. That's a great idea. How often we have agenda items, but we still show up to the meeting and don't articulate what we want our role to be. In our case, we don't see much of a conflict. Now the point is this gives an opportunity to see whether we have been following a culture where we are not really getting into knowing if there is a conflict. This gives an opportunity to figure out amongst the team members, whether we are trying to overstep someone and not making an appropriate decision by giving an opportunity to somebody else speak out. Thank you, that's a great use of this. Any other uses or new ideas? I believe with this exercise, sharing it with the team, like you gave the example of Susan, now the stakeholders will come up to own the responsibilities. So it will be like right now Agile is like team decision making, team decision making. Now actually the stakeholders will come and own that responsibility because we'll clearly see who is making the decisions. No, thank you. And that's one of the biggest things that I see as a pattern is a product owner who maybe was on the edge and didn't quite know what they were supposed to be doing, especially people who are new to that role, suddenly realized the team needs them to make key decisions. So that's a great use of that. Did you have something? Okay. It is mainly helping us to identify who is required for a particular kind of meetings. If it is a technical meeting who is needed to be involved, if it is a business related, so who is required. So this will help us to understand. Yeah, that's one of the number one benefits people get out of it is because most of us haste meetings. So hopefully it's a lot more than meetings once we get good at this technique. It's not just about who's coming to what meeting but actually talking about the different decisions being made. All right, so as we wrap up, this is being very slowly developed at collaborationcontracts.com. The technique that we showed you today you can use anytime, anywhere. You can do this on a dry erase board in a conference room. You can do this with Google Sheets or any other number of ways you want to. You can go check out collaborationcontracts.com. You can use it to create a collaboration contract and get some responses back. We're slowly but surely kind of flushing that out but I encourage you to try using this in your own organizations in whatever way makes sense for you. And with that, I think we just want to say thanks for coming today and hopefully you got some real value out of this.