Anti-Patterns

Anti-Patterns - Why can't we have more of these in life?

I was reviewing the Threat Modeling Manifesto and came across their anti-patterns to threat modeling. Outside of being an excellent call to action and a great resources for getting organizations and individuals threat modeling, I love the special attention to anti-patterns for the following reasons. 


By focusing on the WRONG behaviors, you paint the picture of how a process or a project will fail. Pre-Mortems, which are effortlessly more proactive than their reactive brother (the Post-mortem) because the focus has shifted from learning  only when we fail to diagnosing what failure before it occurs. Highlight the nasty behaviors or processes before they take over the project and lead us into a no-win situation within our project.  Post-mortems still have their place, but identifying the bus after you are flat on the sidewalk somehow feels less valuable to my dead project. 


Cobra-Kai took a lot of heat for this policy but it should be applied more frequently. Introducing a new process is hard but its harder when you let bad behavior or bad culture get the Krane kick up in the air. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then you have to be willing to strike culture in the neck before it has a chance to get that whole "if done right, no can defend" crane kick thing going for it. By the way, if this analogy goes over your head, invest some time by watching the  original Karate Kid. Everyone could use a bit more of Mr. Miyagi's wisdom in their life.  "Its okay to lose to opponent! Must not lose to fear!" - Mr. Miyagi (talking about Corporate Finance 201, probably). 


When anti-patterns align with certain behaviors, I think it should be approach to give them persona based names. Consider the behavior where a customer stands in front of a retail service professional and berates that individual repeatedly asking to see the manager until she gets whatever she wants. We call this anti-pattern "Karen" and it has become an endearing persona. It even has its own haircut! Maybe offices should replace those motivational posters with anti-pattern posters. "This is Karen, she shouts when she should listen, she ridicules when she should be compassionate, she commands when she should politely ask". 

Why don't more things have anti-patterns or anti-behaviors?