Shock Therapy: Turning A Beginner Into A Freestyler?

Last week I was chanting … “We need: Freestylers!”

“We need people that can use any technique, any mindset, any approach at the right time.”

One concern was raised by Craig Brown: “Freestyling is for experts. Beginners need guides.” or, as Akshay put it: “Expert chefs can freestyle. Normal people need recipes.”

But how do you turn beginners into chefs? Fast?

I think the answer can be found in what Jeff Sutherland describes in “Shock Therapy: Bootstrapping Hyperproductive Scrum“. If you have a new team that has no experience with Scrum, you will put a very experienced Scum Master in charge and he will set the rules. Relentlessly.

Image by otisarchives4.

There are just a few rules, not a binder of procedures.

Only a few rules, that make up the basics of Scrum, but they have to be followed with strong discipline. The Scrum Master will make sure this happens.

Set the rules first, than, after a while, let go when it becomes natural.

It’s called “patterning”: keep repeating certain behavior until you get it, and it becomes natural.

Of course, if you are drilling teams with desctructive behavior and try to manipulate everyone involved, this “shock therapy” becomes dangerous.

Jeff clarifies:

“Therapy without the heart of compassion could be misused. However, misuse is not likely to create a hyperproductive team so there is a self-correcting mechanism here.”

Could a series of Shock Therapies (in Scrum, PMBoK, Prince2, XP…) turn a beginner into a Freestyler?