How to Teach Smart People How to Learn II

The fact is, more and more jobs--no matter what the title--are taking the contours of "knowledge work."

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-loop learning is not simply a function of how people feel. It is a reflection of how they think--that is, the cognitive rules of reasoning they use to design and implement their actions.

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.

The fact is, more and more jobs--no matter what the title--are taking the contours of "knowledge work."

ACTION POINT: 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 reflect on and then change their own organizational practices.

How to Teach Smart People How to Learn

A company that aspires to succeed in the tougher business environment of today's world must first 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 difficulty 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.

First, most people define 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 reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways the 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 defining 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 when ever 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.

ACTION POINT: Learn from your mistakes.

How do I Learn II

...not acting on this knowledge condemns one to nonperformance.

Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire.  When I ask people, "How do you learn?" most of them know the answer,  But when I ask, "Do you act on this knowledge?" few answer yes.  And yet, acting on this knowledge is the key to performance; or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemns one to nonperformance.

Am I a reader or a listener? and How do I learn? are the first questions to ask.  But they are by no means the only ones.  To manage yourself effectively, you also have to ask, Do I work well with people, or am I a loner?  And if you do work well with people, you then must ask, In what relationship?

Some people work best as subordinates.  General George Patton, the great American military hero of World War II, is a prime example.  Patton was America's top troop commander.  yet when he was proposed for an independent command, General George Marshall, the U.S. chief of staff--and probably the most successful picker of men in U.S. history--said, "Patton is the best subordinate the American army has ever produced, but he would be the worst commander." 

Some people work best as team members.  Others work best alone.  Some are exceptionally talented as coaches and mentors; others are simply incompetent as mentors.

ACTION POINT:  Act on your knowledge of how you learn. 

How do I Learn

...there are probably half a dozen different ways to learn.

The second thing to know about how one performs is to know how one learns. Many first-class writers--Winston Churchill is but one example--do poorly in school. They tend to remember their schooling as pure torture. Yet few of their classmates remember it the same way. They may not have enjoyed the school very much, but the worst they suffered was boredom. The explanation is that writers do not, as a rule, learn by listening and reading. They learn by writing. Because schools do not allow them to learn this way, they get poor grades.

Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody. But to be forced to learn the way a school teaches is sheer hell for students who learn differently. Indeed, there are probably half a dozen different ways to learn.


There are people, like Churchill, who learn by writing. Some people learn by taking copious notes. Beethoven, for example, left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks, yet he said he never actually looked at them when he composed. Asked why he kept them, he is reported to have replied, "If I don't write it down immediately, I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget it and I never have to look it up again." Some people learn by doing. Others learn by hearing themselves talk.


A chief executive I know who converted a small and mediocre family business into the leading company in its industry was one of those people who learn by talking. He was in the habit of calling his entire senior staff into his office once a week and then talking at them for two or three hours. He would raise policy issues and argue three different positions on each one. He rarely asked his associates for comments or questions; he simply needed an audience to hear himself talk. That's how he learned. And although he is a fairly extreme case, learning through talking is by no means an unusual method. Successful trial lawyers learn the same way, as do many medical diagnosticians.


ACTION POINT: Discover and develop your learning style.