Scrum Teams And Challenging Experience Dependent Categorization

Experience dependent categorization is a natural way in which our heads
work to spend a minimal amount of energy thinking about something. This
is not a surprising mechanism since it saves energy to use habits and
allows us to think fast. Habits can reduce the amount of thinking we
have to do and offer a path of least resistance. However, those same
habits can become blinders to doing things a different way as well as a
grind that robs us of enthusiasm. I have seen teams that work with a
sense of fatalism since they believe nothing is really changing.
Sometimes, scrum teams need help escaping the trap of habitual thinking
that robs a team of energy and creativity. This is an issue of
sustainability for agile teams.

When we encounter a team that is projecting a feeling that nothing ever
changes, we have our first clue that something needs to happen to
freshen things up. A beauty of the scrum or agile framework is that it
can help us detect when a team is in this state. And a trap of the Scrum
framework is it?s adherence to such a simple framework that we easily
internalize it and make a habit that blinds us. What we need is a
strategy that will challenge them and help break the status quo. In
other words we must break their experience dependent categorization
mechanisms otherwise they will sub-consciously revert to old paths of
thinking. The old paths of thinking are paths of least resistance and
thus easy to fall back on. News ways of thinking are stimulated by new
perceptions. So, any strategy that involves helping a team stay fresh
will require us to explore ways of generating new perceptions for the team.

We can begin by looking for opportunities to change their perceptions.
? Moving the tables today is a simple way to do this. Working at bar
height if that was not done recently. Sitting in new places.
? Hold any meetings that are one on one in different locations.
? Change tools or use of tools.
? Post jokes at daily scrum on wall.
? Post different inspiring images of things you like
? Print out pager instead of sharing via collaboration tools when that
makes sense.
? Use back and white.
? Use color.
? Play music to start a planning meeting.
We need to challenge smartly here on how to change but, not be too overt
about it. If we challenge them more their energy, focus and creativity
will all respond in a positive direction. We have the scrum framework to
rely on so this should not be a confusing stretch or hard to assess if
our strategy is working.

My advice is this. Look to challenge perceptions when the team is
running on low energy, or getting trapped in a grind. They are their
best aid making the right changes to deal with the grind. We can help by
stimulating the environment with new perceptions. This will help the
team break away from experience dependent categorization mechanisms.