Shu-Ha-Ri is frequently used as a good model that shows how we adopt new skills. The general idea is pretty simple. First, we just follow the rules. We don’t ask how the thing works, we just do the basic training. That’s Shu level.
Then we move to understanding what we are doing. Instead of simply following the rules we try to grasp why the stuff we’re doing works and why the bigger whole was structured the way it was. We still follow the rules though. That’s Ha level.
Finally, we get fluent with what we do and we also have deep understanding of it. We are ready to break the rules. Well, not for the sake of breaking them of course. We are, however, ready to interpret a lot of things and use our own judgement. It will sometimes tell us to go beyond the existing set constraints. And that’s Ri level.
I’ve heard that model being used often to advise people initially going with “by the book” approach. Here’s Scrum, Kanban or whatever. And here’s a book that ultimately tells you what to do. Just do it the way it tells you, OK?
Remember, you start at Shu and only later you’d be fluent enough to make your own tweaks.
OK, I do understand the rationale behind such attitude. I’ve seen enough teams that do cherry picking without really trying to understand the thing. Why all the parts were in the mechanism in the first place. What was the goal of introducing the method in the first place. On such occasions someone may want to go like “just do the whole damn thing the way the book tells you.”
It doesn’t solve a problem though.
In fact, the problem here is lack of understanding of a method or a practice a team is trying to adopt.
We don’t solve that problem by pushing solutions through people’s throats. The best we can do is to help them understand the method or the practice in a broader context.
It won’t happen on Shu level. It is actually the main goal of Ha level.
I would go as far to argue that, in our context, starting on a Shu level may simply be a waste of time. Shu-Ha-Ri model assumes that we are learning the right thing. This sounds dangerously close to stating that we can assume that a chosen method would definitely solve our problems. Note: we make such an assumption without really understanding the method. Isn’t it inconsistent?
Normally, the opposite is true. We need to understand a method to be able to even assess whether it is relevant in any given context. I think here of rather deep understanding. It doesn’t mean going through practices only. It means figuring out what principles are behind and, most importantly, which values need to be embraced to make the practices work.
Stephen Parry often says that processing the waste more effectively is cheaper, neater, faster waste. It is true for work items we build. It is true also for changes we introduce to the organization. A simple fact that we become more and more proficient with a specific practice or a method doesn’t automatically mean that the bottom line improves in any way.
That’s why Shu-Ha-Ri is misguiding. We need to start with understanding. Otherwise we are likely to end up with yet another cargo cult. We’d be simply copying practices because others do that. We’d be doing that even if they aren’t aligned with principles and values that our organization operates by.
We need to start at least on Ha level. Interestingly enough, it means that the whole Shu level is pretty much irrelevant. Given that there is understanding, people will fill the gaps in basic skills this way or the other.
What many people point is how prevalent Shu-Ha-Ri is in all sorts of areas: martial arts, cooking, etc. I’m not trying to say it is not applicable in all these contexts. We are in a different situation though. My point is that we haven’t decided that Karate is the way to go or we want to become a perfect sushi master. If the method was defined than I would unlikely object. But it isn’t.
Are there teams that can say that Scrum (or whatever else) is their thing before they really understand the deeper context? If there are then they can perfectly go through Shu-Ha-Ri and it will work great. I just don’t seem to meet such teams and organizations.
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18 comments… add one
I agree. It seems to me that learning the Shu level first tries to establish a practice as a “habit.” Then, when people are used to doing it a certain way, they can teach the other levels as more of a justification than a reasoning.
Trying to pick a set of practices without understanding is clearly going to fail, but that doesn’t mean there is no value in the Shu-Ha-Ri analogy.
It’s very common for members of a team to be at a different level of understanding when attempting to orientate around a particular flavour of agile. It’s possible (I would say likely) that a sub-set of the team with Ha or Ri level understanding has identified that a given set of practices would help with the problem the team is encountering, and convinced the team to give it a go.
The Shu-Ha-Ri analogy here is useful in this situation, not to deny the other members of the team the context, but to emphasise the importance of following the practices, just for now, while they build that context. The goal should always be to get everyone to at least Ha level, so questioning and understanding should be encouraged. But it’s usually better to just start than wait for everyone to get to Ha level before giving it a go.
So a team cannot have everyone start on Shu level, but individuals within a team can start at Shu level as a team transforms.
I agree with Ed – he’s captured it much more succintly.
OTOH it may also be an issue of personality, especially in the software space. I have seen a lot of developers wanting to know a practice thoroghly before they practice.
@Ed – I’m with you on that. I don’t say that everyone has to have thorough understanding of a method before giving it a go. What often I see however is that no one has enough understanding to even be able to say how applicable a method would be in their context.
Let alone the understanding. There’s no will to understand either.
What you end up with in such a scenario is just a cargo cult. I covered that in one of my presentations: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/mindset-context-methods
My peeve with Shu-Ha-Ri is that it is, in fact, counterproductive in terms of choosing a proper method or set of practices. An input data to Shu-Ha-Ri is that we know what we want to learn.
I want to learn boxing so I start with perfecting my punch. That’s good. However, our problem is more like, I want to defend myself. Boxing may be one strategy. Shooting another. Avoidance one more. Punching would be relevant only in a small subset of these.
What we need is understanding principles and values behind methods, as well as organizational principles and values (real, not claimed). Shu-Ha-Ri doesn’t respond to that challenge well.
Chip and Dan Heath documented clearly when adopting a complex new approach to a difficult problem, the success pattern is a) wanting to do it because it is potentially better (not just because everyone else is doing it), and b) mastering it before you change it, and the failure pattern what changing it before you understood it, much less mastered it.
I have noticed a certain arrogance in the tone of some practitioners, “You’re just Shu, so do what you’re told.” This is silly and counter-productive.
The objective is to learn fast. So you start by doing the new thing as close to the book as you can. Do it frequently. Ask (yourself) a lot of questions. Film, debrief, do it again and learn some more. Once you get good at it, then you can start trying out new things.
BTW – the Heath brothers’ example was a new form of heart surgery. And surgeons are just as challenged with new ideas as the rest of us ;-)
Starting at Ha sounds nice. Why not just start at Ri? It isn’t that simple. The experiences that help us gain the level of understanding to work at the Ha level, are the experiences we carry out at the Shu level.
Going straight to the Ha level could be possible via e.g. Knowledge transfer, but only explicit knowledge can be transferred that way, so knowledge of simple or complicated things. For complex things, that can only be understood via tacit knowledge, learned only through experience, the best we can hope for is speeding up the Shu stage.
At least that is my first step when trying to understand something new. In most cases I wouldn’t even know what starting at the Ha stage would look like without at least conducting some Shu style rehearsal of the actions.
We, software developers, seem to make a habit of taking a Japanese concept, stripping it of meaningful context, then realizing it doesn’t work for us. Could we not make similar fallacy arguments for kanban and kaizen?
In the case of Shu-Ha-Ri, maybe the fallacy is that one can find Shu in a book. It seems to be the same reasoning by which “knowledge management” is only a wiki. Maybe those cargo cult Scrum teams will never advance because they don’t have a Grandmaster to teach them. Shu-Ha-Ri is not a guarantee. Many people practice karate or sushi without ever becoming masters.
My sense of Shu-Ha-Ri is that it is empirical — an observation by Japanese masters about the stages of how their students learn. For martial arts, Shu-Ha-Ri isn’t a choice. I don’t think it’s a choice for software teams either. A team might not create any more value from practicing the strict forms of Scrum without deviation. You might not have a better meal for practicing the recipes in the Joy of Cooking without variation. That doesn’t mean Shu isn’t necessary for getting to Ha, where you can break with tradition, and then find ways to create more value or have a better meal.
With all due respect (and as long-time lurker and first time poster, I really mean that), I think you’re begging the question. No team that has understanding of a deeper context would need Scrum. The problem is that you can’t know what tool will yield understanding of deeper context for a team. In my opinion, Scrum-by-the-book is a Wittgenstein’s ladder, “He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.” But, Scrum is a short book, so if you’re stuck, maybe you should get down and try a different ladder.
@Ian – I’d be with you if we assumed that we know that we want to do sushi / karate / Scrum / whatever. The thing is that in our context Scrum, or any other method for that matter, is not a mandatory step that we need to go through.
Another argument I make here is that, probably unlike in martial arts or cooking, we may reach understanding without going through Shu. I posit that I understand Scrum even though I have never gone through Scrum Shu. I am happy to break the Scrum tradition and reuse the bits and pieces despite the fact that I never was an apprentice and never worked with a grandmaster.
Hello
Just use it Shu Ha Ri
Shu Learn, Ha Play with, Ri innovate. If you start with Ri, that you presume never learned anything, never framing, never doing anything.
To control and succeed you need to know more than your competitor or find an cooperateur to help you make it fast.
I like Agile, I like Scrum. But for me you use retrospective as a fast learning games, and Ha to implement and fail fast and Ri for improvement in real time.
So the Shu Ha Ri model is stay actual. Without skills, without time to frame your learning no Start up…
Thanks
@Dominique – I’m OK with learn, play with and innovate analogy. The question that remains unanswered is learn and play with what exactly? This is where the model falls short.
Why do we assume that we should go with Scrum (or whatever else for that matter)? Unless we understand the tools their applicability in our own context is pretty much an unknown.
That’s where I see the biggest difference between applying Shu-Ha-Ri in our context and in e.g. martial arts. In the latter case a specific tool, be it kung-fu, karate, or whatever else, is chosen and we operate in the context “how to learn this thing effectively and efficiently.” Ultimately the goal is not to fight best but to learn a specific thing.
I would propose that if the goal was to fight the best one should understand different combat techniques as well as their own environment to be able to pick the right path. It might be learning how to shoot, hand-to-hand combat, or maybe managing an army.
Without understanding both the tools and the environment there’s no answer for that question.
I suspect that the most important aspect of Shu is discipline, and not the simple rote repetition of a single tool/technique/concept. I have never met, in my 58 years, any person whose first attempt of any task was successful. By that I mean, I have never seen an instance where someone began any adventure at an advanced level and understood why their actions were successful in that set of circumstances. Shu, to me, is the phase of learning where mistakes are expected, needed to be more precise, to ensure learning actually happens.
Even in the arena of martial arts, the learner has a high level concept of why. So do new developers, testers, Scrum Masters….. They know that the purpose is to create something of value. But what is value and how many attempts does it take to learn what is of real value.
Please do not remove from any of our colleagues the time to learn the basics. As we learn the basics, we also learn their limitations, which allow us to learn more.
IOWs, please do not insist that we eat batter and imagine it to be cake.
I’m with @EdCostello – there are 2 sides to the situation. When deciding on a framework/methodology/approach (self defence strategy) to follow/use, we need to understand:
1) the problem to be solved
2) experience (at at least Ha level) in various potential approaches (boxing, shooting, running away)
Only then can we effectively select the right approach for our problem, in our context and culture. More often than not, a combination of frameworks is ideal. The problem is that the person/team deciding on the framework are often experts (Ri, maybe) on only one or two approaches. Likewise, when executives or senior leadership are trying to change the company’s approach to problem solving/value delivery, they either rely on these internal experts to guide them or they take the word of the consulting firm du jour with the shiniest, trendiest approach (and if they have a foreign accent, all the better).
BUT, assuming you have properly selected the right approach based on your problem and context, then a Shu Ha Ri approach to getting people up to speed is relevant. There is still a bit of a dilemma – you want people to challenge and adapt what they do (Ha) but to do that, they first need to *do* (at Shu level). In order to do, they need to have some initial knowledge/theory.
Having said that, the “people” still need to understand the why before they will commit to doing any of this in any order! As Simon Sinek says “Start with WHY.”
When I was a young child I was taught how to hold a pencil. I was taught, through meticulous repetition, how to draw each letter and each number. When I had mastered drawing letters and numbers, I was taught how to arrange them into meaningful patterns, words. As I mastered words, my teachers revealed the meanings of the words and I mastered those. Then my teachers began stringing the words together, sentences. Paragraphs. Composition structure. And I gained a deeper understanding.
Shu-ha-ri is not static. Mastering the pencil did not make me a great writer. When I mastered the pencil I did not know I wanted to write. Today, I no longer need the pencil to write . . . I’ve mastered my craft. Yet I continue to learn the tools of my craft. It seems I am always in some state of shu, ha and ri. That is the only honest conclusion I can draw.
@Stephen – When you were a child you did learn lots of things without following a teacher: sitting, walking, playing with toys, interacting with world, speaking, and so on and so forth.
Following a teacher or master is not the only method of learning. As a matter of fact it is not even a natural way of learning for kids. When the method isn’t superimposed on kids they mostly learn through exploration and experimentation.
However, even though I do have an opinion on what are effective ways of learning, it wasn’t the point of this post. The point was that Shu-Ha-Ri works when we know what we want to learn.
To stick with your example: following Shu-Ha-Ri makes sense when you know that you want to be a writer. Of course we can argue that to some level (probably Shu) learning writing is a necessary skill, no matter what. Then, not everyone wants or needs to be able to write decently or nicely. As a matter of fact typing is slowly but surely taking over the role of writing in our lives. Handwriting may eventually become a nice-to-have skill, not a must-have skill, which it is today.
The thing is that when we blindly apply the concept of Shu-Ha-Ri to other contexts we copy the assumption that, whatever the skill in dispute, we are talking about a must-have skill.
It is not. A method is never a universal answer. I would even argue that agility, as a concept, is not so either. The argument here, though, is mostly within the context of learning methods, practices and tools. Within this context Shu-Ha-Ri is deficient as it disables exploratory aspect of learning. It assumes that we have already picked a method. At the same the act of picking the right method in this context requires deeper understanding of both an organization and a range of different methods.
What Shu-Ha-Ri contributes to is higher proficiency of what is frequently a wrong tool for the task. Thus the title.
If Shu, Ha, Ri is used to cram the whole into a process it is NOT Shu, Ha, Ri. But an imposter. The concept is still that here a little and there a little bit of information is acquired, sorted, and finally learned. Begin again with the PROCESS or LOOP of Shu, Ha, Ri and aquire some new portion, not necessarily related knowledge at the time, and sorted it and become proficient.
Began again… And. Again. At some point in the future a whole SYSTEM can be learned to mastery.
Here is where what the above is getting at to me. We as a society or business or organization are looking for a way to metabolize whole systems in mass and that, friends, just ain’t gonna happen.
Very good article. It helped me realize a short fall in my information sharing process. Just because I understand a large portion of a system does not mean I can share the whole the thing in a short period of time.
Thank you.
Interesting read. However, I am struggling to understand if there is a misunderstanding or may be you assumed “SHU-HA-RI” means imposing solutions at the SHU stage.
Lets take a step back. SHU-HA-RI doesn’t mean that you impose a solution in SHU stage. It is as simple as, what ever you decide to learn (guitar, soccer, marshal arts, process, cooking) there are 3 stages. Learn the rules, bend the rules and break the rules.
I am not sure where does imposing solutions come in. Am I losing a context ? SHU doesn’t mean “I am suggesting you learn Scrum / Kanban” instead it means ” Whatever you decide to learn, follow the rules” in SHU Stage (Basics / foundation).
Just wondering how does learning ( how to ride a bike, start writing, play guitar, soccer) starts from a HA stage and not SHU?
I love SHU-HA-RI because thats what I relate to the most in my life while growing up from day to day activities to professional life.
@Pradeep – (Typically) learning how to ride a bike does not start from Ha. It starts from Shu. What’s important is that “I want to learn to ride a bike” is a given assumption here.
The difference between learning to ride a bike and learning Scrum is that the former is a valid ends while the latter, in vast majority of cases, is a means to another end.
The goal is different: more predictability, boosted productivity, better responsiveness, improved quality, or what have you. Scrum (or any other method for that matter) is a way, not THE way to achieve such a goal. It may be close to optimal or pretty much the opposite. Or anything in between. To understand whether a specific means is a good choice Shu stage understanding of that means is insufficient.
If learning Scrum was the ultimate goal, than applying Shu-Ha-Ri would be a perfectly valid strategy. However, I challenge the notion that it is, almost ever, an ends on its own. The test one could use is asking whether they learn something for the sake of learning it.
I did learn how to ride a snowboard for the sake of being able to ride a snowboard. It wasn’t a means to “have more fun in winter” or “keep myself fit” etc.
On the contrary, I didn’t learn a method, any method, with the same attitude. It was always in the context of broadening my understanding of how the work gets done and how we can better produce the desired outcomes (in any given context). With such motivation broadening my toolbox of known methods is justifiable.
If it was however only to improve outcomes in a specific context justification of learning given method would be disputable. If that method would work well in my context and, indeed, improve the outcomes then it would have been a good choice. Otherwise it wouldn’t. The problem is, I would have known that only once I reached some level of sophistication (which I loosely connect with Ha stage). In other words I would have known whether I learned the right thing only after I learned it.
What I am advocating here is looking for ways to circumvent the Shu Ha Ri in order to be able to answer the question what is an applicable method. It is, in a way, avoiding learning by the book only to realize that we’ve been learning from the wrong book.
Because Shu Ha Ri is only a way, not THE way, to learn things there are approaches that can give us that answer. In the very beginning I used your example of learning how to ride a bike. I think few people learn to ride a bike Shu Ha Ri way. It is mostly through a series of experiments and tinkering that we end up controlling a bike. There’s little following/bending/breaking rules approach in that, as in most everyday skills that we learn.
Great article, and in a way solidified my belief in the importance of Shu Ha Ri.
I understand what you’re proposing: that in a case where you don’t know what to do (ex. which martial art to choose), you would pick the “wrong” art and be stuck with it, or wasted time. As you you put it “…only to realize that we’ve been learning from the wrong book.”.
I would pose this question, is there such a thing as a wrong book? I would say there isn’t, and in fact chosing scrum through Shu Ha Ri, would lead to two things. It works out great, and you stick with it, it doesn’t work out and you switch to something else.
Like with martial arts, you could pick karate, only to find it wasn’t the self defense class you need (maybe you get in a situation where it failed you). So you switch to a new one. The good news is that all that your learned in karate is not wasted.