Shu-Ha-Ri


The Shu-Ha-Ri distinction dates back, as I learned, not to the origins of Aikido in the early 1900s, but to Japanese Noh theater almost four centuries ago.

Understanding the three levels of listening has turned out to be of greater value than I expected. It was originally placed as a small section in an appendix, but so many people wrote to me during the early drafts of the book, describing how they were using the Shu-Ha-Ri distinction to smooth meetings, that I moved it forward into the Introduction.

You can apply Shu-Ha-Ri to designing courses and writing technique materials.

Recognize that some people come to the course in the Shu state, looking for the technique that solves their problems. Other people come already knowing many techniques, afraid that you will try to convince them that your technique is the only technique that solves their problems.

Organize your material to reassure the advanced people in your course that it is not being presented as a cure-all, but simply as another technique in the toolbox of the professional. Then teach the technique at the Shu level so that the beginners will have a starter technique to take home with them. But before you finish, put the technique into a larger context so that the beginners can start to see the breadth of the field and so that the advanced people can see how this technique bridges to others they might already know or want to learn.

I got caught in a Shu-Ha-Ri mismatch shortly after publishing the first edition and was saved by someone who knew the trio.

In 2002, Jim Highsmith and I were organizing the first Agile Development Conference (alert readers will notice here that conference organization is a cooperative game of invention and communication, but one in which the incremental/ iterative and collocation development strategies are difficult to use, if not impossible). It was my first-ever conference-organizing experience, and I was very much in the Shu stage but without anyone to follow. Accordingly, I was incredibly diligent in listing everything that needed to be taken care of for the conference. I had sheets and sheets of paper containing all manner of minutiae.

We signed an experienced conference organizer, who was baffled by my excruciatingly long lists. A colleague watching our tense conversations pointed out that my long lists were immaterial to her because she operated in Ri mode and could make the necessary plans in her head rather than on slips of paper.

That observation gave me the peace of mind I needed to relax and let her take over. I still kept lists of details to watch for, but only the ones I was specifically concerned about.

You can apply the lessons of Shu-Ha-Ri in your own environment:

  • Look for level mismatches at work. Introduce the Shu-Ha-Ri concept and see whether that might help to smooth the discussion.

  • Update your training materials to highlight the sections that are for Shu-level learning and where the Ha and Ri levels fit.



Agile Software Development. The Cooperative Game
Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0321482751
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 126

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