When “Team Harmony” Becomes the Problem: A Scrum Master Coaching Moment

 A Scrum Master I was tutoring came to me visibly frustrated.

“I think I need to push the team harder. They’ve become too comfortable. Everything is consensus-driven. Velocity is flat. Technical debt keeps growing. Stories keep rolling over. And now bugs are showing up because the Product Owner doesn’t give enough clarity.”

On the surface, this sounded familiar. Many leaders respond to this by tightening controls, adding pressure, or redefining accountability. But instead of jumping to how to push the team, I asked a different question:

“Why do you believe pushing the team is the right answer?”

That question changed the conversation. As we unpacked the situation, a pattern emerged. The team wasn’t lacking effort, intelligence, or intent. From the discussions, I felt that they were highly cooperative, polite, and aligned. At the least, they appeared to be. The emerging patterns were that the decisions were rarely challenged, estimates were accepted without debate, and risks never surfaced clearly. The Scrum Master was experiencing wasn’t laziness. It was group comfort. That’s when I introduced a concept from Japanese lean organizational culture: Mura Shakai (pronounced moo-rah-shah-kah-ee)

Mura Shakai is a cultural pattern often called as the 'village effect.' Contrary to the collaborative self-organized team's effort where the team drives to excel, this pattern is analogous to the collectivist's approach to respecting harmony and conformity where people avoid standing out because of the social risk it carries. The very fact that no risks surfaced or questions emerged on estimates or decisions mean that no individual wants to 'rock the boat!' 

I reasoned that people confuse agility thinking that asking powerful challenging questions or raising risks disrupt psychological safety! On the contrary, psychological safety does not mandate the absence of conflict but the presence of constructive disagreement. In our example case, the misunderstanding of avoiding conflict meant that all the observed challenges (stagnant velocity, rising technical debt, shifting stories, and PO blamed for bugs) were being socially filtered before they were truly visible. 

This microcosm of collectivist group thinking needs to be carefully addressed not by pointing fingers. So, pushing people hard would be a counter-productive move as it will only create more dissent, people gravitate more towards their zone, and defend their practices. Per the Speed Leas' (1985) conflict model, we are in level 3 - contest at a minimum.

Now that we had a better understanding of the actual problem, I introduced the A3 technique. The attention to detail, quick-win mentality, and connections one slide business canvas model has made this technique to be an easy solution to solve problem. A3 is a thinking discipline (similar deBono hats, for instance) applied at the team level forcing them to slow down, face the reality, and confront the uncomfortable issues collectively. So, how does this approach work?  

1. A3 approach starts with reframing the problem! So, instead of telling the team is slow, I suggested stating, "stories are rescoped in mid-sprint", "work carries forward in multiple sprints" or "defects are discovered too late in the life cycle." Now, none of these statements are new to them but brings context into the problem. 
2. The next step is to understand the impact on the current state. This is the "Go and See" approach also called as the Gembutsu (Rajagopalan, 2024). The goal here would be understand the impact of the reframed problem statements. Asking ourselves, "Where does this ambiguity come from?, How does this technical debt slow us down later? When does the team recognize this risk and why was it not raised?" I also cautioned the Scrum Master to practice active listening. 
3. The next step is to perform root-cause analysis.  Ishikawa diagram, 5-Why, Influence Diagram, and many other techniques exist. The focus is two-fold. Not only identify the root causes but also identify potential set of solutions.
4. The final step is to identify the action items on what can be changed. Suggest and coach but not direct action items, I emphasized. Once they identify the action items, owners, and the related changes, make them visible from the next iteration creating accountability!

I concluded the session recalling that Mura Shakai favors harmony and sometimes hides a team dysfunction. A3 technique reminds us to be structured about unearthing the dysfunction to the team and make accountability visible to the team.

References

Leas, S. B. (1985). Discover your conflict management style. Alban Institute.    

Rajagopalan, S. (2024). Quality Responsibility: 5G of Quality Audit. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2024/08/quality-responsibility-5g-of-quality.html