# Learning Obstacles Summary::Obstacles to Organizational Learning ## Learning Obstacles Similar doc: [[Obstacles to Learning]] December 18, 2001 **Obstacles to Organizational Learning** **_Summary_**_: Learning to understand the structure of assumptions through double-loop learning and changing it through conversation and action seem simple. We should not, however, consider achieving this understanding and accomplishing these changes as easy. Our own reasoning creates the biggest obstacles to our success in these endeavors._ by James B. Berger If you have read my last two articles, you may now believe that changing organizational performance seems simple and easy. Examining assumptions engenders double-loop learning and a deeper understanding of the influences on behavior. Conversation and action changes the structure of assumptions and then behavior and performance. People could accurately describe these processes as simple, but they should not consider them as easy. Chirs Argyris, whom I have also cited in those two articles, has researched the subject of organizational learning for at least the last three decades. He has pointed out in many books and articles that the reasoning processes of people in organizations create the primary obstacle to organizational learning. That reasoning process generates organizational defensive routines that inhibit learning, and without real learning, organizations cannot achieve meaningful change. This means that rational people take action that impedes the achievement of their own objectives. As perverse as this may seem, Argyris argues that his research confirms this contention. People in organizations constantly espouse theories that contradict the theories revealed by their actions, which he contends reflect their true beliefs. Although such behavior seems paradoxical, one can consider it logically consistent when one knows all the thinking involved. To better understand the reasoning process, let’s first consider one manifestation of organizational defensive routines—mixed messages. Argyris has constructed four rules for designing and implementing mixed messages: 1)   Design a message that is inconsistent. 2)   Act as if the message is not inconsistent. 3)   Make the inconsistency in the message, and the act that there is no inconsistency, undiscussable. 4)   Make the undiscussability of the undiscussable also undiscussable.--1-- These rules may seem ridiculous to you, or they may give you an uncomfortable feeling of truth, but consider the following example: Imagine that your company has implemented a policy of open communication. You attend a meeting in which a supervisor tells an employee under his supervision that his sales presentation lacked the polish needed to make it effective. After the meeting, a fellow employee, who strongly supports the open communication policy, says that the supervisor should not have been so blunt and insensitive. To you it seems inconsistent that, in the interest of open communication, this employee did not speak up in the meeting. You do not know, however, that this employee believes that to have spoken up in the meeting would have been blunt and insensitive. By not acting blunt and insensitive, he has behaved in a logically consistent manner, yet he has employed a theory-in-practice that conflicts with his espoused theory of open communication. In this example, the actor has delivered a message that is inconsistent with his actions. Yet, he acts as if no inconsistency exists. This behavior becomes particularly troublesome when one discovers that he does not see the inconsistency in his behavior. To him it seems perfectly logical. Argyris points out that this pattern of conflicting behavior emerges from higher order abstract thinking. The actors build a set of beliefs based on previous experience, which remains largely untested. As Rick Ross states in The Fifth Discipline _Fieldbook_, “Our ability to achieve the results we truly desire is eroded by our feelings that: C    Our beliefs are _the_ truth. C    The truth is _obvious_. C    Our beliefs are based on real data. C    The data we select are the real data.”--2-- This pattern of reasoning creates what Argyris describes as _invalid knowledge_. He argues that organizations cannot learn effectively when they operate based on invalid knowledge. Management has a basic responsibility to develop _valid knowledge_ in an organization in order that it may perform effectively, learn and maintain its competitive position. Argyris offers a much more extensive and well-documented argument than I have presented here. To fully understand his argument requires a little concentration and persistence, for the argument runs counter to what we tend to consider rational behavior. He makes, however, a sufficiently compelling case that you will soon see how organizations create some of their own biggest obstacles to learning and progress through their own reasoning processes. Notes: --1-- Argyris, Chris. _On Organizational Learning_. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1992, 1994. Page 42. --2-- Senge, Peter M., et. al. _The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook_. New York: Doubleday, 1994. “The Ladder of Inference” by Rick Ross. Page 242. This article was published on Suite101.com December 18, 2001.  Copyright © James B. Berger