Pull back the curtain on organizations’ strategic plans and you’re likely to find one or more transformation initiatives. These include adopting Agile methods, modern engineering practices, DevOps, API design, microservices, and cloud architectures. Successful transformations require learning that is hard to achieve through traditional approaches to training. Most organizations adopt short-form, workshop-style training despite its lack of effectiveness in forming new habits and ways of working that stick. Neuroscience informs us deliberate practice over time is required to build new ways of working. Feedback during the early stages of the learning cycle is also critical for forming new habits. A solution for these problems is a dojo. A dojo is an immersive learning environment where teams learn new skills and new ways to solve problems. They practice those skills while doing their real-world work in their real-world environments, with guidance from experienced practitioners. This is a radically different approach compared to completing scripted exercises in a pristine, sandbox environment where nothing can go wrong.
During the past seven years over 30 companies have created dojos inside their organizations. Dion and Joel Tosi, co-founders of Dojo and Co., were there from the beginning and were influential in creating the dojo model. They have helped over a dozen organizations create dojos and have helped foster adoption of the dojo model through their collaboration with members of the Dojo Consortium. They are the authors of the Amazon bestseller [Creating Your Dojo: Upskill Your Organization for Digital Evolution] Creating Your Dojo Organization Evolution).
