HOW DO TRANFORMING ORGANIZATIONS LEARN?
In a context marked by complexity, acceleration and constant change,
organizations face needs and challenges that, in many cases, demand a response
while still in the diagnostic phase.
In this scenario, the question I have been asking myself recently is not
so much how organizations are structured, but rather how they learn.
More specifically: what makes some organizations, or teams, learn with
greater depth and truly transform themselves, and what makes others simply
adapt to keep doing the same thing in a slightly different way?
To approach an answer, I will draw on the theory of single-loop
and double-loop learning, formulated by Chris Argyris (1923–2013),
theorist and professor at Yale and Harvard, and Donald A. Schön (1930–1997),
philosopher and professor at MIT. This theory, formulated almost fifty years
ago, remains in my view fully valid for understanding why some organizations,
or teams, transform, adapt and respond better to complexity than others
(Argyris & Schön, 1978).
Two loops, two depths
of learning
Single-loop learning occurs when an organization detects an error
and corrects it without questioning the causes that produced it. We could say
it is the learning of adjustment: an alternative strategy or way of doing
things is sought within the same rules of the game —the same objectives,
values, plans and norms— without calling them into question. It is a useful and
necessary form of learning, but insufficient when the problem is not one of
procedure, but of framework, of context.
Let us consider, for example, an organization that finds that
coordination between teams is not working. If the response is to implement new
follow-up meetings or to add more layers of supervision, we are dealing with
single-loop learning: we correct the symptom without touching the root. The
organization adapts, but it does not transform.
Double-loop learning, by contrast, occurs when the organization
goes further and questions its own governing variables: the deep assumptions,
the implicit values, the mental frameworks that guide action.
In the same example, double-loop learning would mean asking why that
coordination difficulty exists: is it a problem of trust between teams? Of a
culture of control? Of leadership model?
The distinction is important because many organizational problems cannot
be resolved by adjusting procedures: they require revisiting the frameworks
that generate them.
When organizations practise only single-loop learning, they adapt
without transforming.
Organizational models
carry implicit learning models
From this theory, we can infer that an organization’s model largely
determines how it learns. Therefore, when an organization moves from one model
to another —say, from a hierarchical and centralized model to one based on
self-management and distributed leadership— it is not enough to change the
organizational chart or the roles: it is also necessary to move from one
learning model to another.
This transition is neither immediate nor simple: it requires that people
and teams stop doing things the way they have been doing them and move toward a
new way of doing.
And very probably, this is where conflict will emerge, in the most
constructive sense of the term: the tension between how we work now and how we
want to work. This tension between models can become, if it is managed
properly, transformative energy for both people and the organization.
However, for this transformation to be possible, the inconsistencies
between the old model —both organizational and learning— and the new model
toward which one wants to move must be brought to the surface.
Surfacing these inconsistencies is a necessary condition for being able
to work on them. To do so, the authors emphasize the importance of an “external
intervention” in the team or organization itself. Today we would probably call
this external accompaniment: someone who can see from the outside what is hard
to perceive from within, or what often does not receive enough attention
because it feels uncomfortable. This external accompaniment must make it
possible for everything that generates resistance to be worked on rather than
avoided.
Returning to the question that opened this reflection, what
distinguishes organizations that truly transform from those that merely adapt
is not so much the speed with which they respond to change or the efficiency of
their adjustments, but rather the depth with which they learn.
In a context where the capacity to adapt is taken for granted, the
differentiating factor will be the capacity to practice double-loop learning:
the capacity to question one’s own norms, frameworks and deep assumptions, to
incorporate this questioning into the day-to-day life of teams, and to learn
from it collectively. This is probably where the boundary lies between working
differently in order to keep doing the same thing and working differently in
order to give genuinely new responses to needs that are also genuinely new.
_____
Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1978). Organizational Learning: A
Theory of Action Perspective. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.
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