“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change.” – Milton Friedman.
Some teams struggle. They flounder in chaos, miss deadlines, and suffer from constant firefighting. Eventually, the pain becomes unbearable, and they take action—hiring an agile coach, changing their approach, or even replacing key team members.
Other teams just get by. They hit their deadlines (some of the time). They hold their agile events. They deliver work that’s… fine. Not great. Not terrible. And because the discomfort never reaches breaking point, nothing changes.
This is the Region Beta Paradox at play.
What is the Region Beta Paradox?
It’s a psychological phenomenon where severe pain leads to faster recovery than mild discomfort. If a situation is bad enough, people take action. If it’s just tolerable, they stay stuck.
A terrible job prompts a career change. A mediocre one drags on for years.
A serious injury forces rehabilitation. A mild one lingers untreated.
And in Scrum teams? A disaster sparks transformation. Mediocrity breeds stagnation.
Why Good-Enough Teams Stay Stuck
“The enemy of great is not bad, it’s good.” – Jim Collins.
Scrum exists to enable continuous improvement, but improvement requires discomfort. If the discomfort is minor, there’s little urgency in making changes.
Common examples:
- Velocity is unreliable, but there are no consequences to not completing a sprint backlog.
- Retrospectives feel repetitive, but they happen, so no one questions their value.
- Sprint goals are rarely achieved, but at least some work gets delivered.
The problem is apparent: there is no trigger for change. The team isn’t struggling enough to overhaul its process but isn’t thriving either.
How to Break Out of Region Beta
“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.” – Aristotle.
As a Scrum Master, your job is to prevent the team from settling into this low-grade dysfunction. That means creating pressure before a crisis forces it upon them.
1. Raise Awareness of the Cost of Stagnation
Teams stuck in Region Beta don’t realise how much they’re losing. Unpredictability, inefficiencies, and wasted potential become normal.
- Use data to show the cost of inefficiencies, such as the time lost to context switching, unplanned work, or unclear requirements.
- Run retrospectives focusing on opportunity costs: “What could we achieve if we improved X?”
2. Manufacture Healthy Discomfort
Turn up the heat if a problem isn’t painful enough to force action.
- Challenge the team with bolder sprint goals that demand better collaboration.
- Introduce self-imposed constraints—smaller batch sizes, stricter work-in-progress (WIP) limits—to expose inefficiencies.
- Rotate ownership of tasks to force fresh perspectives on existing problems.
3. Use Experiments to Break Inertia
Teams in Region Beta don’t improve because they don’t see an apparent reason to change. The solution? Make change easy.
- Introduce small, time-boxed experiments: “Let’s try X for two sprints and review.”
- Frame improvements as tests, not commitments, to reduce fear of failure.
- Celebrate even minor wins to create momentum for more significant change.
4. Shift the Mindset from "Not Bad" to "How Good Could This Be?"
Good Scrum Masters ask, “What problems are holding us back?” Great Scrum Masters ask, “What’s the next level for this team?”
- Stop measuring progress against the past—compare against potential instead.
- Move beyond fixing problems and start optimising strengths.
- Encourage the team to visualise their ideal way of working and experiment towards it.
Final Thought
Teams don’t improve just because they’re using Scrum. They improve because they feel the urgency to do so.
The paradox is this: The teams that struggle most often become the best because they’re forced to change. The ones that are just “fine” remain average indefinitely.
Which one will yours be?