Teaching Smart People How to Learn free essay sample

Teaching Smart People How to Learn Chris Argyris A Chris Argyris James Bryant Conant Professor Harvard Business School 4 Â © 1991 Harvard Business Review. Distributed by The New York Times Special Features/Syndication Sales. ny company that aspires to succeed in the tougher business environment of the 1990s must rst resolve a basic dilemma: success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning, yet most people don’t know how to learn. What’s more, those members of the organization that many assume to be the best at learning are, in fact, not very good at it.I am talking about the well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals who occupy key leadership positions in the modern corporation. Most companies not only have tremendous dif culty addressing this learning dilemma; they aren’t even aware that it exists. The reason: they misunderstand what learning is and how to bring it about. As a result, they tend to make two mistakes in their efforts to become a learning organization. We will write a custom essay sample on Teaching Smart People How to Learn or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page First, most people de ne learning too narrowly as mere ‘‘problem solving,’’ so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment.Solving problems is important. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. They need to re ect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization’s problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about de ning and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right. I have coined the terms ‘‘single loop’’ and ‘‘double loop’’ learning to capture this crucial distinction.To give a simple analogy: a thermostat that automatically turns on the heat whenever the temperature in a room drops below 68 degrees is a good example of single-loop learning. A thermostat that could ask, ‘‘Why am I set at 68 degrees? ’’ and then explore whether or not some other temperature might more economically achieve the goal of heating the room would be engaging in double-loop learning. Highly skilled professionals are frequently very good at single-loop learning.After all, they have spent much of their lives acquiring academic credentials, mastering one or a number of intellectual disciplines, and applying those disciplines to solve real-world problems. But ironically, this very fact helps explain why professionals are often so bad at double-loop learning. Put simply, because many professionals are almost always successful at what they do, they rarely experience failure. And because they have rarely failed, they have never learned how to learn from failure.So whenever their single-loop learning strategies go wrong, they become defensive, screen out criticism, and put the ‘‘blame’’ on anyone and everyone but themselves. In short, their ability to learn shuts down precisely at the moment they need it the most. The propensity among professionals to behave defensively helps shed light on the second mistake that companies make about learning. The common assumption is that getting people to learn is largely a matter of motivation. When people have the right attitudes and commitment, learning automatically follows.So companies focus on creating new organizational structures—compensation programs, performance reviews, corporate cultures, and the like—that are designed to create motivated and committed employees. But effective double-loop learning is not simply a function of how people feel. It is a re ection of how they think—that is, the cognitive rules or reasoning they use to design Volume 4, Number 2, REFLECTIONS and implement their actions. Think of these rules as a kind of ‘‘master program’’ stored in the brain, governing all behavior.Defensive reasoning can block learning even when the individual commitment to it is high, just as a computer program with hidden bugs can produce results exactly the opposite of what its designers had planned. Companies can learn how to resolve the learning dilemma. What it takes is to make the ways managers and employees reason about their behavior a focus of organizational learning and continuous improvement programs. Teaching people how to reason about their behavior in new and more effective ways breaks down the defenses that block learning. All of the examples that follow involve a particular kind of professional: fast-track consultants at major management consulting companies. But the implications of my argument go far beyond this speci c occupational group. The fact is, more and more jobs— no matter what the title—are taking on the contours of ‘‘knowledge work. ’’ People at all levels of the organization must combine the mastery of some highly specialized technical expertise with the ability to work effectively in teams, form productive relationships with clients and customers, and critically re ect on and then change their own organizational practices.And the nuts and bolts of management—whether of high-powered consultants or service representatives, senior managers or factory technicians—increasingly consists of guiding and integrating the autonomous but interconnected work of highly skilled people. How Professionals Avoid Learning For 15 years, I have been condu cting in-depth studies of management consultants. I decided to study consultants for a few simple reasons. First, they are the epitome of the highly educated professionals who play an increasingly central role in all organizations. Almost all of the consultants I’ve studied have MBAs from the top three or four U.S. business schools. They are also highly committed to their work. For instance, at one company, more than 90% of the consultants responded in a survey that they were ‘‘highly satis ed’’ with their jobs and with the company. I also assumed that such professional consultants would be good at learning. After all, the essence of their job is to teach others how to do things differently. I found, however, that these consultants embodied the learning dilemma. The most enthusiastic about continuous improvement in their own organizations, they were also often the biggest obstacle to its complete success.As long as efforts at learning and change focused on external organizational factors— job redesign, compensation programs, performance review, and leadership training—the professionals were enthusiastic participants. Indeed, creating new systems and structures was precisely the kind of challenge that well-educated, highly motivated professionals thrived on. And yet the moment the quest for continuous improvement turned to the professionals’ own performance, something went wrong. It wasn’t a matter of bad attitude. The professionals’ commitment to excellence was genuine, and the vision of the company was clear.Nevertheless, continuous improvement did not persist. And the longer the continuous improvement efforts continued, the greater the likelihood that they would produce ever-diminishing returns. What happened? The professionals began to feel embarrassed. They were threatened by the prospect of critically examining their own role in the organization. Indeed, because they were so well paid (and generally believed that their employers were supportive and fair), the idea that their performance might not be at its best made them feel guilty. Far from being a catalyst for real change, such feelings caused most to react defensively.