Drive: Mastery

In my last article, I discussed autonomy, the first essential ingredient Daniel Pink gives for Motivation 3.0, where creativity and intrinsic motivation can flourish. His next ingredient is mastery--the striving to continuously improve. What is essential for achieving mastery?

Flow

An essential aspect of achieving mastery is what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychology researcher from Hungary, calls flow.

We’ve all most likely experienced flow. But what is it? The poets knew about it before the researchers and provide us with a wonderful picture:

“You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation,

you have only to watch his eyes: a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon

making a primary incision, a clerk completing a bill of lading,

wear the same rapt expression, forgetting themselves in a function.

How beautiful it is, That eye-on-the-object look.

--W. H. Auden

Flow is that feeling you get when you’re so close to sending that tricky bouldering problem, nailing that challenging guitar riff, or painting your best work yet. You forget about everything around you, even yourself, as you are entranced with the joy of overcoming something just beyond your current ability. It’s so close you can almost taste it, but it is still just beyond your reach.

That is flow. It is where “the relationship between what a person has to do and what he can do are perfect. The challenge isn’t too easy. Nor is it too difficult. It is a notch or two beyond his current abilities, which stretch the body and mind in a way that makes the effort itself the most delicious reward” (Pink 113).

For me, one area of my life where I’ve recently achieved flow is through learning Koine Greek, the language that the New Testament was written in. I have a goal to read the Greek New Testament like I would be able to in English--where the translation occurs almost instantaneously. For this non-grammarian, I achieved flow when learning to translate participles, what our professor called “the Mt. Everest of Koine Greek.” And that it was! Participles are verbal adjectives (ex: the running dog, where running is a participle). In Koine Greek, participles can have different tenses, voices, genders, cases, number, and can function three different ways in sentences.

Friends were off having a game night, but I was busy climbing Mt. Everest, with the bitter wind of participles attempting to blow me down. The climb was tough, but it was reachable. Translating those sentences stretched my brain, but the joy of achieving mastery kept me going and put me into a state of flow for periods of the ascent (granted, there were some points where I thought learning participles was too out of my reach, but I made it through).

Flow is not the only contributor to mastery, though. What else contributes to mastery?

Learning Goals, Not Performance Goals

I have the goal of becoming fluent in the language, what Pink calls a learning goal, not just passing the course, what he would refer to as a performance goal. Performance goals allow you to do just enough to get the mark you want, without care for mastery or not (who hasn’t crammed for an exam then forgot everything afterward?). Learning goals, however, lead you to truly understand the topic, at which point passing the exam becomes merely a bonus. In our context, an example of a learning goal would be: "To become the best Scrum Master I can be," whereas a performance goal would be: "To pass the PSM III." Learning goals are also shown to improve one’s ability to cope with adversity since failure is seen as an opportunity to learn rather than merely show you are a poor performer (Pink 120).

Grit

One final ingredient for mastery is grit. Mastery of anything will require hard work. And hard work requires grit. Julius Erving, a former basketball player, sums grit up nicely: “Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them.” Grit is that character quality that forces you to do something when it’s the last thing you want to do. In my case, learning a language is hard work. There is no getting around it. I have to review vocab repeatedly, practice noun declensions, re-read how participles work, and continuously practice translating. If you want to master anything, you cannot get around the need for grit.

Scrum Teams

How can Scrum Teams pursue mastery? How can they achieve flow and demonstrate grit? In conversation, one Agile Coach mentioned that pair/mob programming might be an effective way (not to mention the cross-training benefits). Put two/three people together to figure out some complex code and watch for that "eye-on-the-object look" as they tackle the problem together. Pair/mob programming also provides accountability to work hard and gives peers an opportunity to encourage one another when the tough gets going--when grit is required.

King Solomon said it well: “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12).

Similarly, empirical process control encourages teams to learn. It encourages teams to experiment and get to the work quickly to validate their assumptions and adapt if needed. It allows teams to view failure as an opportunity to learn instead of telling them to quit. Our work is complex, and we are going to fail. But we can learn from those failures and make better decisions moving forward.

Conclusion

Thus, mastery requires flow, learning goals, and some grit. Scrum teams should keep learning (especially from failure) central and think about practices that could encourage more flow and grit, pair/mob programming being one.

What about you, though? Have you seen flow, grit, or an environment of learning on your scrum teams? What could you do to help cultivate them on your teams?

In my next article, I’ll sum up Pink’s final ingredient for maintaining creativity and intrinsic motivation--purpose.

P. S.

For those interested, here is a brief sentence translated from the Greek New Testament. Thankfully, no participles in this one!

λεγει αυτω ο Ιησουσ, Εγω ειμι η οδοσ και η αληθεια και η ζωη; ουδεισ ερχεται προσ τον πατερα ει μη δι εμου. 

Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father unless through me.” --John 14:6.