Summary
"Teaching Smart People How to Learn" by Chris Argyris
First published in the Harvard Business Review, May-June 1991, pp 99-109
Reprinted in Organization Development and Transformation by French, Bell and Zawacki, 1994
Business success depends on the ability to learn but most people/organizations don't know how to learn. They excel at solving problems created by external forces but they fail to recognize that to learn one needs to look inward at one's own behavior. Argyris states there are two kinds of learning which he names: single loop and double loop. Examples of each are:
Single loop - A thermostat set to 68 degrees turns up the heat whenever the temperature drops below 68.
Double Loop - One asks why the thermostat is set to 68 degrees. Is that the optimum temperature?
Professionals have a body of knowledge that constrains their learning. They have a difficult time thinking outside the box. They rarely fail and do not know how to learn from failure.
When challenged, they become very defensive and tend to focus attention away from their behavior to that of others. Argyris calls this defensive reasoning. Professionals also go into
a doom loop of despair if they don't perform perfectly or if they do not receive adequate recognition. The term doom zone is also used because professionals go into despair very quickly.
Argyris states that "...everyone develops a theory of action- a set of rules that individuals use to design and implement their own behaviors as well as to understand the behavior of others." However, people don't usually follow their stated action theories. The way they really behave can be called their theory-in-use. It is usually:
"1. To remain in unilateral control.
2. To maximize "winning" and minimize "losing".
3. To suppress negative feelings.
4. To be as "rational" as possible- by which people mean defining clear
objectives and evaluating their behavior in terms of whether or not
they have achieved them."
This typical theory in use makes learning impossible. People can be taught to "...identify the
inconsistencies between their espoused and actual theories of action." They need to learn to use the same strategies that effective organizations use: collect valid data, analyze it and constantly test the inferences drawn from the data. Organizations can help by starting with top-down change. Top-level managers must first learn to change their defensive behavior.
Productive reasoning can be tied to real business problems so the results of this effort can be seen and appreciated.
- prepared by Donna Silsbee