Dreyfus Squared

Dreyfus Squared

Note: This concept is from Dan North’s talk Patterns of Effective Teams.

• 5 levels of skills acquisition
  • Novice - needs rules
    • Learning the basics
    • Any more information will just overwhelm
  • Advanced Beginner - tests rules
    • Understand the rules
    • Try to figure out why the rules are the rules
      • What happens if I break the rules?
  • Competent - applies rules
    • Can apply the rules to achieve a goal
    • Can ask the right questions in order to produce the desired outcome
  • Proficient - falls back on rules
    • Internalised the rules
    • Solutions appear fully formed in your head
    • Start having insight/instinct/intuition
    • You don’t yet trust your insight/instinct/intuition, so you fall back on the rules to guide you
  • Expert - transcends rules
    • No longer think in rules
    • Chess grandmaster analogy
      • The grandmaster doesn’t understand the game better than you, they simply have a greater pool of memories and experiences of past games to think back on.
      • They contextualise the game in play relative to previous similar games
        • From there they are able to reduce the scope of thinking needed for them to come up with their next move

Dreyfus squared looks at what happens when you pair people at different skill levels on the grid

• Expert + Novice
  • The expert literally doesn’t know how to work in rules.
  • Novice needs rules.
  • Not a good pairing
• Advanced Beginner + Advanced Beginner
  • Lots of rule breaking
  • Lots of learning
  • Don’t put any of it in production
• Competent + Novice
  • Competent is not operating on insight or intuition yet
    • They’re just really good at thinking with and applying the rules
• Expert + Proficient
  • Very powerful pairing
  • Builds the confidence in the proficient