Developing organizational learning
Double-loop learning is a way to break people out of a cycle that just perpetuates the way things are done. Double-loop learning encourages critical reflection of an issue, enabling people to question what under-pins accepted methods, thinking and processes. Quite simply, it encourages people to ask why something is the way it is.
Overview
Organizational learning matters for many reasons. In particular, it supports successful and relevant problem solving and decision-making, avoiding slow responses and stagnation and ensuring the long-term profitability of a company. To help organizations improve how they learn, Chris Argyris and Donald Schon distinguished between single-loop and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning simply maintains and improves an existing process – it doesn’t question the validity of the process. Double-loop learning involves challenging the existence and function of a process, enabling a step-change in how a company operates.
Instead of simply measuring what people do, double-loop learning is about looking at what they do not do and then changing methods, behavior and thinking accordingly. Fundamentally, it is about challenging the status quo, testing how people both learn and apply that learning and then encouraging the adoption of a more critical approach to making improvements across a wide range of activities – from processes and plans to goals and values.
The key point of double-loop learning is that it encourages people to raise their sights from the mundane and accepted, freeing them from the constraints of existing business dogma, encouraging them to see the bigger picture and refocusing their thinking towards how to achieve even greater advances. This enables them to assess situations and problem-solve effectively and creatively to produce ideas that are more likely to lead to the right changes and deliver significant success.
Organizational learning
Single-loop learning Tackles an issue by observing results, evaluating the situation within the current, accepted approach and devising solutions that operate within these boundaries. It seeks to improve by simply doing something better.
Double-loop learning Considers an issue through critical reflection, challenging assumptions and thinking creatively. This type of organizational learning aims to make significant improvements through identifying the fundamental changes that are necessary to gain competitive advantage.
Following on from double-loop learning, William Isaacs advocates triple-loop learning, where people need to be constantly aware of how their language and behavior influences the thinking and assumptions of everyone else in the company, to avoid perpetuating erroneous thinking and methods and to create the right culture and mindset.