Shu Ha Ri

Shu Ha Ri.

What is Shu Ha Ri?

Shu Ha Ri is a Japanese term, usually applied to martial arts training, to describe the stages in learning a skill. The first word, "Shu", means "to obey". The second word, "Ha", means "to break free". The third word, "Ri", means "to depart".

These three words describe the three stages of learning. When you are a novice, just starting out on a new skill, you need clear, precise, unambiguous instructions. You do not understand the bigger picture or the intent for the instructions. Any further background only confuses you. You are at the "Shu" stage - "to obey". After a while, you begin to learn the instructions, and the question that comes up is "why?". Why am I following these rules this way? What is the intent behind them? You slowly start to understand the context behind these rules. At this point, you have broken free of the rules. You are at the "Ha" stage - "to break free". Finally, you become an expert. You not only know the rules and the reasons, but you are in a position to create your own rules. You no longer follow the old rules, but follow your rules, crafted by you, just for you. You are at the "Ri" stage - "to depart".

In a fascinating experiment, expert airline pilots were asked to prepare rules for novice pilots. The novice pilots followed the rules and had no problems with them. However, when the expert pilots were then asked to follow their own rules, they found that their performance fell sharply. This is because expert pilots do not usually fly planes the way described in the rules. Expert pilots rely a lot on experience and intuition and often break the very rules that they had prescribed. They use contextual decision making and rules leave very little room for this type of decision making. However, had novice pilots been asked to perform without the rules, they would not have been able to, because they lacked the experience and intuition. Rules are critical for novice pilots to fly a plane. That is Shu Ha Ri. What is good for the expert is often not so good for the novice and vice-versa.

This principle is particularly applicable to process, or software development process to be more precise, although it is equally applicable to any organizational process. The great big battle about whether we need processes or not is missing the point completely. Everyone follows a process in their head. Even no process is a process. The question is whether to follow a predefined process or an ad-hoc process where you just do whatever you are thinking of at that moment.

Let us apply the Shu-Ha-Ri principle at this point. Are you a novice at managing projects? In that case you need a clear, unambiguous process. If you have been in multiple project, then you need a less defined process, or apply your own process if you are an expert at project management. These leave room for the contextual decision making we talked about earlier. However, the reverse will simply not work. Leaving novices without a process, or imposing a rigid process on an expert are both doomed to fail right from the start.

So the point to take away from this is that the way novices and experts perform the same task is very different, and the guidance that they require is also very different. For all those grappling with the process question, think back again to Shu Ha Ri and see how it can help you.

See also: Dreyfus model of Skill Acquisition

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Book Review: Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment

Summary: Mastery is one of the best self-help books I've read in a long time.

Mastery is a unique book among self-help books. Most books in this category promise immediate results. Titles like Learn X in 2 weeks are more common than flies. Mastery is the exact anti-thesis of these books. Mastery focusses on the long term. The core idea in the book is that it takes a very long time to get any good at any skill. Instead of getting frustrated at not seeing the goal, Mastery tells us to enjoy the journey, continuously striving to improve, and one day, a few decades down the road you will be a true master of the skill.

Learning any skill occurs in spurts. Between spurts are plateaus, where in spite of a lot of effort, there seems to be no progress. Then a spurt again, followed by a longer plateau. These plateaus frustrate most of us when learning a skill. There is nothing more discouraging than working and seeing no progress. But accordng to Mastery, there is progress, although we cannot see it. Most of us quit when we reach such a plateau, thinking that we cannot make it. But that is a mistake, because if we persevere, there will eventually be another spurt of progress.

In order to stay on the plateau, Mastery promotes the idea of 'goalless practise'. The idea is to practise, not for any particular goal, but because you enjoy doing the skill. If you can enjoy practise, then you need no additional motivation to continue going when you are on the plateau.

And practise is the key. If there is one thing that differentiates Masters from Amateurs, it is a dedication to practise. So, if you want to become a Master, you will need to practise, not for a couple of days or weeks, but for tens of years.

There is a lot more in the book, including steps to keep you on the path to Mastery. Written by an ex-fighter pilot and aikido master, it contains a lot of zen like philosophy including a focus on long term results and goalless practise.

This is an excellent book. Buy it and read it.

Update: Reading this book reminded me of a similar article by Peter Norvig titled Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, where he says

Researchers have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music.

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Index of learning styles

Tying in with my previous posts on learning styles, I just came across this page which has an index of learning styles. From the website:

The Index of Learning Styles is an on-line instrument used to assess preferences on four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global) of a learning style model formulated by Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman

Ad hoc groups

Sachin posted an interesting comment about learning in companies.

One of the things I've noticed when talking to people is that most [Indian] companies do not take any steps to nurture adhoc groups. These are groups where like minded people can get together and talk or do side projects. Companies can create an environment where people can form such groups by themselves and then just sit back.

If you look at many of the US software companies (Google, MS etc) there is something there which causes people to do side projects and spread knowledge all the time. If one guy finds something cool, pretty soon there are a bunch of people discussing it.

Compare that with my experiences here. If anyone talks about some interesting topic, not connected with work, the reaction is something like "oh ok," rather than "cool, lets find out more about that." Or if someone decides to do something interesting, not connected with work, the first reaction is "whats the use" rather than "cool! lets do that this saturday".

Why is that? Is it that there are not many doer type people in Indian companies? Or is it because the company culture doesn't enable them to actually do anything? It is probably some combination of both I would think.

It's not like this in all companies of course (eg: Yahoo Bangalore), but its true in a depressingly large number of them.

What can be done about this?

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The different modes of learning

I've been thinking about this topic a lot over the last couple of months. It is a topic that I'm figuring out with my team. I'm just going to throw it out and see what the feedback is like.

I’m going back to my college days for this the first part of this essay. What I want to discuss is the different modes of learning. This will probably come as no surprise to most of you: Different people learn through different means.

Some learn by listening. Remember people who just sat in class and absorbed the entire lecture ? They learnt by listening. Then there are those who learn by writing. They take notes. Some people learn by reading. They just sleep in all the clases, then go home, read the text book and ace the exam. Some learn by talking. They need to discuess the topic with someone else to clarify their thinking. Finally, we all know that student who could write great programs on the computer, but could barely follow what was going on in class. They learnt by doing.

These five categories represent the different modes of learning. [These are actually a combination of modes. For more on the theory, check out these links - 1, 2, 3]. They are not mutually exclusive. Some people can learn in multiple ways, but most people have one dominant mode of learning and other minor modes of learning.

Think back to your college batch, and you would find a few classmates who fit each of the above categories. The college environment is designed to present multiple methods of learning. You can either listen to the lecturer, try out excercises, attend lab sessions, talk to your classmates about a topic, or read the textbook.

Now, someone is going to point out that (in most of India at least) lecturers are often recent college graduates who couldn’t get any other job, that the textbooks are written to maximise your exam score rather than teach anything, most students take down notes verbatim without any understanding and the labs are underfunded relics. This is a topic for another day. For now, lets just assume that they support all methods of learning.

Let’s get back to the present now.

Scenario I: Your company has a training programme under which they have called someone to give a seminar on Design Patterns. You’re a Project Manager. Madhav, a member of your team, will be doing some design work soon, so you send him over to attend the seminar. The only problem is that Madhav learns by reading, not listening. Not surprisingly the seminar is extremely boring for him and he sleeps through it.

Scenario II: You are working on a new project and have just recieved a thick list of requirements. You pass the requirements to Priyanka, the lead programmer, and ask her to take a look. The problem is, Priyanka learns by talking, not by reading. The next day, the coversation goes like this:

You: So did you have a look at the requirements I passed you?

Priyanka: I had a look, but they look complicated. Can we have a meeting to discuss them?

You: I’m busy right now. I’ll be back in two days to check on your progress.

2 days later…

You: So how are the requirements? I need to give an estimate for the completion date this evening.

Priyanka: I’m not sure I understand it. Can we discuss it?

You: You still don’t understand it? I gave you two extra days. What more do you want? Meetings are just a waste of time. Can’t you just read it and give me an estimate? I need to give an estimate today.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, Scott Adams is drawing you in the next Dilbert strip.

Most managers don’t really understand the modes of learning of their team members. If Priyanka learns by talking, the manager should know it and let her talk about the requirements. Forcing her to read the requirements will go nowhere. Similarly if Ramesh likes to read, his manager should pass his some reading material before he attends the seminar. The primary responsibility of a manager is to enable his or her team members to do their work as best they can, and knowing their learning modes can help with this.

Companies also like to talk about how employee oriented they are, and about their professional development policies, but in most cases this just means that they shove their employees through a couple of seminars a year, just because they have to.

Real professional development is a lot more than just sending everyone to a few seminars. Companies need to take a hint from colleges where most of the real learning takes place. They need a good library where the readers can hang out. They need cool co-workers so that the talkers can talk with each other and learn. They need ad-hoc groups of people who learn by doing to get together and do side projects. They need to create internal blogs so that the writers can write stuff, and of course, the good old seminars for the listeners to attend.

Any comments? How is it at the companies you work (or worked) at?

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The Visionaries: Jaime Escalante

The Visionaries: Jaime Escalante : A really nice interview with Jaime Escalante on education and excellence.