Teaching Smart People How to Learn

In Chris Argyris’s Teaching Smart People How to Learn, he emphasizes the issue that most businesses and organizations suffer is from the inability of individuals to learn from their own failures. Highly education professionals (as he explains) who are always successful and victorious in their past endeavors fails to recognize their own ignorance when they encounter adversity. To most people, these past accomplishments are greatly valued and respected. However, in business, failure to recognize when one has failed has detrimental effects. Business success depends on the ability to learn and recognize mistakes but most people in these organizations don't know how to learn. Learning is not just narrowly defined as problem solving created by external forces, but to recognize that in order to learn, one needs to look inward at one's own behavior.

From the lack of exposure to failures, individuals in high positions become immune to learning new concepts and methods. When confronted with a difficult situation unexpectedly, these people get defensive, repel criticisms, and convey the “blame” on others aside from themselves. They rarely fail and do not know how to learn from failure. This is a self-protective mechanism to prevent admitting to wrong-doing, which they perceive as signs of weakness. Instead, they continue to ineffectively manage the organization without changing their behavior and without bring about “real” change. Argyris states there are two kinds of learning which he names single loop and double loop. He provided the metaphor that a single loop is similar to a thermostat set to 68 degrees that turns up the heat whenever the temperature drops below 68. On the other hand, a double loop requires a higher level of thinking that challenges the underlying question itself “why is the thermostat is set to 68 degrees?” and “is that the optimum temperature?”

From reading this article, I can honestly relate the assumptions in my everyday life. When an event takes a startling turn and ends up unfavorably, it’s within human nature to lay the blame on others rather than self reflecting on my own behaviors and actions. In my earlier years of working in the education field, when something goes array I can almost systematically divert my attention to blaming other people, students, budget cuts, and other factors that wasn’t related to me. As I matured through the process, I now focus on myself when a situation turns problematic and ask myself “what could I’ve done differently to change the results and what preventative measures can I take to ensure the same pattern doesn’t occur twice?” I have come to the conclusion that if I can change my method of thinking, then I will ultimately change my behavior in the long run (with a few bumps and curves) long the way.