I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with some incredible people. Most of these individuals have been amazing collaborators — the ones who are willing to kill their babies on a project, give you the benefit of the doubt, or listen and follow someone else’s ideas. But I’ve also worked with individuals who aren’t great collaborators. As is true with all failure, I learned quite a bit from these poor collaborations. Here are five things you can do to ruin a collaboration.
1) Refuse to See Beyond a Problem
“We humans like to know where we are headed, but creativity demands that we travel paths that lead to who-knows-where.” – Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.
All creative projects come with a list of problems to solve. The inability, or unwillingness, to see beyond the next problem can make you lose sight of the goal, or worse, change the goal entirely.
Every creative endeavor is a march through uncertainty. Researchers studying design and creative problem-solving have documented a phenomenon called fixation: the tendency for individuals to lock onto a problem or a narrow set of solutions, inadvertently blocking more creative paths forward. This mental narrowing isn’t always a conscious choice. Under pressure or high cognitive load, our brains instinctively triage information, funneling focus toward whatever feels most immediate and threatening. This kind of cognitive tunnel vision leaves the bigger picture in the dark. [2][3][^4]
When one person on a team is fixed on an obstacle, the group’s energy gets pulled into a reactive loop rather than building toward the original vision. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and the architect of one of the most successful creative cultures in history, saw this play out repeatedly. His solution is simple: Make forward motion itself the mechanism for learning. “Balance,” he argued, “is often struck through forward motion…” This is the idea that you understand what you’re building by continuing to build it, not by stopping every time you hit a wall. [^5]
The antidote isn’t to ignore problems. It’s to reframe them. Where fixated collaborators see a wall, great collaborators ask: What’s on the other side of this wall, and how do we get there? Staying anchored to the original goal is what separates collaborators who generate momentum from those who generate meetings.
2) Forget That Many Minds Make for a Better Solution
“To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation.” — Adam Grant, organizational psychologist and bestselling author
No communication. No cross-pollination. No creative breakthroughs.
The research here is unambiguous: diverse, communicating teams produce better solutions than isolated experts. A landmark study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that when selecting a problem-solving team from a diverse pool, a randomly selected group outperformed a group composed solely of the highest-performing individuals. High performers who share similar backgrounds tend to approach problems from the same angles. Their collective blind spots offset their collective brilliance. Diversity of methods, perspectives, and experiences fills those gaps.[^7]
The creative collaboration literature reinforces this point with equal clarity. As leadership expert Jeff DeGraff puts it, the highest value of collaboration is in “big picture thinking and effectiveness — brainstorming and bringing thoughts together from different perspectives to provide a holistic point of view that resonates and succeeds”. When collaborators go silent or fail to communicate, they rob the group of what makes good collaboration more valuable than the sum of parts.
Two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling captured this beautifully: “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas”. Collaboration is an idea multiplier. But it only works when people are actually talking. [^10]
3) Approach Problems with Only Your Own Skill Set in Mind
“We know that vulnerability is the cornerstone of courage-building, but we often fail to realize that without vulnerability, there is no creativity or innovation. Because there is nothing more uncertain than the creative process, and there is absolutely no innovation without failure.” — Brené Brown, Dare to Lead
The surest way to shrink a creative solution is to build it entirely out of what you already know.
Every collaborator brings a particular lens to the work. The reason we want many minds on a problem is so the collective lens is larger. Using only one person’s viewpoint becomes a liability. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant, in his research into creative originality, found that the most effective creators and leaders are those who actively seek out diverse inputs rather than defaulting to their own knowledge base. Great collaboration, he argues, requires building a “coalition” drawing on the different capabilities, perspectives, and approaches of everyone in the room. [^12]
This isn’t just about courtesy or inclusion. It’s about outcomes. Forbes-cited research on cognitive diversity found that teams with diverse thinking styles improve business decisions. When a collaborator frames every problem through their own expertise, they’re effectively throwing away the majority of the team’s problem-solving capacity. Brené Brown makes the stakes plain: “So many leaders fail to realize that without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation”. To genuinely draw on another person’s skill set requires the vulnerability to admit that your own isn’t enough, and the courage to build something bigger because of it.[13][14]
4) Advocate for Changing the Goal to Make It Easier
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” — Steve Jobs, Apple WWDC Keynote, 1997
Hard things are hard. Get over it.
There is a particular kind of creative cowardice that masquerades as pragmatism: the impulse to shrink a project’s ambition when the original goal proves difficult to achieve. On the surface, it sounds reasonable: why not adjust expectations given the constraints? But what’s really happening is that scope management is being used as a retreat from challenge. The Project Management Institute describes scope creep as one of the most prevalent causes of project failure. Its inverse, quietly contracting the goal to avoid difficulty, is equally destructive, just less discussed. [^16]
The collaborator who advocates lowering the bar isn’t protecting the project; they’re protecting themselves. The original goal is there for a reason. If it’s genuinely unachievable, have that conversation transparently and with full team alignment. But if it’s simply difficult, well, that’s the job. [^15]
Ed Catmull saw this play out constantly in the creative process at Pixar. His philosophy was that the discomfort of a hard goal is not a bug but a feature: the friction of a real challenge forces teams to generate solutions they would never have found on an easier path. Changing the goal to make it easier doesn’t just lower the ceiling on the work; it signals to every team member that difficulty is grounds for surrender. [^17]
5) Get Stuck in Analysis Paralysis
“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Sometimes the best solution is the one you can do now, and refine later.
Analysis paralysis is the state of being so overwhelmed by information, options, or the fear of making the wrong decision that no decision is made. It’s, as Robin Sharma puts it, “the silent killer of more dreams than failure ever will”. It’s a particularly insidious collaboration killer because it looks responsible. The paralyzed collaborator appears thoughtful, thorough, and even cautious. But what they’re actually doing is prioritizing their own comfort over the team’s momentum. Research identifies its root causes as fear of failure, the desire for absolute certainty, and an aversion to risk. When left unchecked, it produces delays, missed opportunities, and a drain on everyone around it. [19][20]
The correct way isn’t recklessness. It’s the recognition that imperfect action is almost always more valuable than perfect inaction. The point isn’t to celebrate sloppiness, it’s to understand that iteration requires a starting point. You cannot refine what you haven’t made. Adam Grant echoes this from the research side: the greatest originals fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most, and you need a lot of bad ideas to get a few good ones. [21][22] Besides, bad ideas are almost never remembered.
The most effective collaborative cultures build in what Amazon calls “two-way doors,” recognizing that most decisions are reversible and that the cost of inaction over time is far greater than the cost of a correctable mistake. Move. Build something. Make it better. The team you’re working with is counting on you. [^23]
References
- Quotes by Ed Catmull (Author of Creativity, Inc.) – Goodreads – The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal—it leads to measuring people by the mistak…
- [PDF] How to Guard Against Fixation? Demonstrating Individual …
- The Psychology of Tunnel Vision: How to Overcome a Dangerous Bias – Tunnel vision is a cognitive bias where attention becomes narrowly focused on a single objective, le…
- Cognitive tunneling: use of visual information under stress – PubMed – References to “tunnel vision” under stress are considered to describe a process of attentional, rath…
- Episode 1: Ed Catmull – Jeremy Utley – Ed also makes amazing arguments for why learning should be centralized in the creative process and h…
- Adam Grant on the Power of Diverse Perspectives in Decision-Making – The Power of Diverse Perspectives in Decision-Making “To get real diversity of thought, you need to …
- Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform … – PMC – NIH – We find that when selecting a problem-solving team from a diverse population of intelligent agents, …
- The Good, the Bad, and the Future of Creative Collaboration – LinkedIn – But with each of these upsides also comes a downside: the chaos of implementation, the disruptive po…
- How to Free Your Organization from the Silo Mentality – By breaking free from the “silo mentality” and adopting an enterprise mindset, leaders can achieve h…
- “How do you go about having good ideas?” “You have a lot of ideas …
- Quote by Brené Brown: “We know that vulnerability is … – Goodreads – We know that vulnerability is the cornerstone of courage-building, but we often fail to realize that…
- Originals – Adam Grant – Originals is about how to champion new ideas and fight groupthink. Using surprising studies and stor…
- Brené Brown on LinkedIn: So many leaders fail to realize that without vulnerability there is no… | 813 comments – So many leaders fail to realize that without vulnerability there is no creativity or innovation. Why…
- Why High-Performing Teams Need Diversity of Thinking – TTI Blog – When teams have diverse perspectives and thinking styles, they perform better, engage more deeply, a…
- People think focus means saying yes to the thin… – Goodreads – Steve Jobs — ‘People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s no…
- Top Five Causes Scope Creep | PMI – Scope creep is one of the most prevalent causes of project failure. This paper examines the five mos…
- Pixar’s Ed Catmull on how to develop a culture of innovation – LinkedIn – In this episode, I break down what it takes to build a culture of innovation and collaboration with …
- You’ve launched too late, by Reid Hoffman – January 3, 2023
- Overcoming Analysis Paralysis – The Leadership Effect – “The paralysis of analysis… kills more opportunities than failure ever will.” Robin Sharma. IN THIS …
- What is Analysis Paralysis and How to Overcome It? | Appinio Blog – Common causes include: Fear of Failure: The fear that your decision will lead to a negative outcome …
- Launch? Or wait for Perfection? – Product – Prowess – This quote by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, suggests that it’s better to launch a product ea…
- Originals – Jon Daiello – Grant’s research reveals why your best design concepts often get killed by managers who have no busi…
- Analysis paralysis is the silent killer of more dreams than actual … – The root cause of paralysis by analysis is often fear of failure or the desire to make the perfect d…