Taking Personal Change Seriously: The Impact of "Organizational Learning" on Management

Practice
Author(s): Peter M. Senge
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Academy of Management Executive (1993-2005), Vol. 17, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 47-
50
Published by: Academy of Management
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 Academy of Management Executive, 2003, Vol. 17, No. 2

........................................................................................................................................................................

Taking personal change

seriously: The impact of
Organizational Learning on
managementpractice

Executive Commentary by Peter M. Senge

After twenty-five years, gauging the impact of a flicts, and to maintain the appearance of being in
book like Argyris and Sch6n's Organizational control. Children in school learn how to display
Learning on management practice presents no behaviors that teachers judge as competent, to get
small undertaking. Theirs was a landmark book. 'right' answers and avoid 'wrong' answers. From
The field of organizational learning is broad and the beginning of one's professional work career,
multi-faceted. So many factors contribute to shift- all manner of attention is devoted to extending this
ing management thinking and action over ex- impression of competence. As Argyris wrote in an
tended periods of time that attributing too much to influential 1991 Harvard Business Review article, it
any one event is foolish. Nonetheless, there are can be especially difficult for "smart people to
several reasons that I consider the book a land- learn"-not because they have little to learn but
mark, and there are strains of thinking in it that I because they have a lot invested in appearing not
think have penetrated quite far. The extent to to need to.' Bosses fear that acknowledging their
which they have shaped new management prac- uncertainties will cause them to lose credibility,
tices is undoubtedly much less. Moreover, I think just as subordinates fear admitting that they are
the only sensible time frame for such an assess- not in control of tasks for which they are account-
ment would be over multiple generations. So, it is able.
much too early to draw conclusions about practice. Clearly Argyris and Schon's ideas are essen-
tially about cultural change, and a quarter of a
century is not a long time for cultural change.
Too Short a Time Frame?
Let me start by elaborating on this last comment.
Detecting and Correcting Error: A Radical Aim
Why would I say that 25 years is too short a time
frame for assessing the impact of a work like Ar- Specifically, Argyris and Schon's entire theory
gyris and Sch6n's? Surely, twenty-five years is a rests on appreciating learning as the "detection
long time, and most would regard it as more than and correction" of error. This sounds eminently
suitable for saying that certain new ideas have logical. But, the sorts of "errors" they are talking
either succeeded or failed to affect management about are personal. To detect an error is to ac-
practice. But, this all depends on the nature of the knowledge incompetence. Doing so publicly in a
ideas. work setting is often seen as "career limiting,"
First and foremost, I consider Argyris and discouragement enough even if it wasn't also per-
Sch6n's core ideas radical. While, on the one hand, sonally threatening. This is why most work cul-
they aim at improving managerial and organiza- tures around the world still today place a great
tional effectiveness-hardly a radical aspiration- deal of emphasis on face-saving and denying er-
they imply a fundamental set of new personal and ror, rather than detecting and correcting it. More-
interpersonal competencies that sit solidly in op- over, as Argyris often points out, these same work
position to widely shared cultural norms. As chil- cultures must say exactly the opposite. If one says,
dren, most of us learn in our families how to avoid "I am denying that an error exists," that itself con-
blame, to win and not lose in interpersonal con- stitutes admitting the error. So, we must deny our
47

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48 Academy of Management
denial, very often to ourselves as well as others.
This is what makes organizational defenses "self-
sealing," as Argyris has often said. And this is
what makes the simple aim of detecting and cor-
recting error still radical today, despite much rec-
ognition of the need for organizations to learn.
Recognizing the weight of institutional condi-
tioning contrary to learning, Argyris says in this
interview that it makes the most sense to start
learning productive reasoning as a child. Yet, he
also says that after 18 years of advocating this idea
at the Harvard Education School, he concluded
that it was going to take "a long, long time," pow-
erful evidence for just how radical learning how to
learn can actually be.
First Signs of Impact
Having recognized that we are at the beginning of
a long journey, what evidence do I have that Argy-
ris and Schon's work has had an impact? First,
interest in organizational learning has not abated.
Despite the coming and going of the organiza-
tional learning and then "knowledge manage-
ment" fads, I find wider currency today than ever
before around the "learning mandate": the idea that
an enterprise's abilities to compete effectively-for
market share or "idea share"-depend on its abili-
ties to learn.
Second, and more to the point of Argyris and
Schon's theory, I find that a great many practi-
tioners today appreciate that learning is funda-
mentally about action. One of the rude awaken-
ings from the substantial investments in "knowledge
management" systems was discovering that "les-
sons learned" data bases and the like are of little
inherent worth. Information, even information
about "lessons learned," is only useful when it
leads to new and more productive actions. While
this may seem obvious, confusion between what
constitutes information and what constitutes
knowledge lay at the heart of many failed knowl-
edge management initiatives. If people had
agreed that knowledge is "the capacity for effec-
tive action," they would not have confused the in-
formation in their data bases with knowledge, nor
would they continue to assume that better informa-
tion will lead to change. Conversely, even inaccu-
rate and incomplete information can be useful-it
all depends on the context of application.
Third, I find that many more practitioners than in
the past appreciate that learning is personal. To
my mind, the core paradox at the heart of organi-
zational learning is that learning is both intimate
and systemic. It requires both personal willing-
ness to detect and correct the errors in my own
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Executive May
behaviors, as well as continual improvement in
the processes, practices, metrics, and governance
structures of larger organizations. It is both, not
one or the other.
Mirrors Are Not Always Flattering
I think we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Argyris
and Schon for laying this foundation. Prior to their
work, there was a tendency by many writers in the
field to "disembody" organizational learning, to
talk about "organizational routines," practices and
processes, and whether these did or did not em-
body feedback loops for learning with no explicit
consideration of whether or not "I am prepared to
learn and change" myself. This tendency persists
still. The fantasy that somehow organizations can
change without personal change, and especially
without change on the part of people in leadership
positions, underlies many change efforts doomed
from the start-such as investing in new technol-
ogies to produce change, or "change programs"
that get "rolled out" though the organization, or
consulting that advises clients on "how to get their
people to change," without ever inquiring about
how they themselves may be a big part of the
changes needed. I think if any one aspect of the
radical core of Argyris and Schon's work has be-
gun to penetrate, it is this: that real organizational
learning must include me. Argyris and Schon
never argued that personal learning was sufficient
for organizational learning-indeed their views on
organizational "theories in use" address just this
point-but they compellingly argued that it was
necessary.
The fantasy that somehow organizations
can change without personal change,
and especially without change on the
part of people in leadership positions,
underlies many change efforts doomed
from the start.
While more and more managers recognize the
personal dimensions of change, this idea still has
probably not yet penetrated into the mainstream.
The personal and cultural threats posed by taking
"my own gaps" seriously remain considerable.
Nonetheless, I find more and more competent man-
agers who have internalized the "personal man-
date" for learning. As one CEO said among peers
recently, when asked how he was doing, "I am
2003
struggling each day to be a human being." Another
top manager at a Fortune 50 company organizes
monthly voluntary gatherings for peers to explore
how "we will have to change in order to learn how
to think more productively together."
Now, one could demur that there has always
been a small minority of CEOs who are more open
and learning oriented. But the key idea of Argyris
and Schon's theory of the personal dimensions of
organizational learning is working continually to
discover gaps between what we say and what we
do, between our "espoused theories" and our "the-
ories in use." This is precisely what I see many
managers starting to recognize and starting to con-
nect to organization-wide challenges. In a fasci-
nating Fortune interview, Novartis CEO Daniel Va-
sella talked about the part that CEOs play in
creating a culture that tacitly sanctions accounting
malpractice: "For all the faults ascribed to Wall
Street these days [of creating quarterly earnings
pressures], CEOs can't really blame research ana-
lysts or institutional shareholders or other inves-
tors for the pressure of short-term performance.
Rather, for many of us the idea of being a success-
ful manager-leading the company from peak to
peak, delivering the goods quarter by quarter-is
an intoxicating one." Vasella says, "The culprit
that drives this cycle [of playing games with the
numbers] isn't fear of failure so much as it is for
many the craving for success. "2
The key idea of Argyris and Schbn's
theory of the personal dimensions of
organizational learning is working
continually to discover gaps between
what we say and what we do.
The Journey Ahead
Lastly, although I am not entirely sure that Chris
would personally like to claim credit for this ac-
complishment, I think more managers today recog-
nize that this is a long journey-that becoming a
"learning organization" is deep, inherently diffi-
cult, time consuming and personally challenging. I
believe this growing recognition comes in large
measure from appreciating that the behaviors and
assumptions of managers are a part of the prob-
lem, that we do have embedded defenses against
seeing gaps in our own actions, and that confront-
ing these problems requires deep personal com-
mitment.
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Senge 49
I was recently visiting with executives who had
been part of an in-company program that Chris
had led the preceding week. They were very en-
thused and said that there was still quite a "buzz"
among those that had participated in the program.
I asked if they were encouraged or discouraged.
The organizer of the event responded that "It is
daunting. The challenge now is to start to build
some momentum. Otherwise, it will be easy for
people to conclude that what we learned from
Chris was right on the money, but it is just too
difficult."
After watching so many quick-fix nostrums run
rampant in business over the past twenty years, I
think recognizing that real learning surfaces deep
and pervasive issues that are daunting is a re-
freshing sign of maturity. After all, one of the most
important implications of Argyris and Sch6n's
work is that there exist limitations to organiza-
tional learning arising from deep habits of thought
and action that we have acquired over a lifetime.
They will not change quickly. Simply recognizing
this territory as legitimate for investing manage-
ment time and commitment represents an impor-
tant step beyond the standard "improvement pro-
grams.
My prediction is that moving these ideas still
further into the management practice mainstream
will depend on aligning them with strategic chal-
lenges that cannot be met any other way. For ex-
ample, as more and more organizations operate
across national boundaries, multiculturalism be-
comes an increasingly strategic issue. This has
been developing very slowly for many years. But
most large corporations are still run by small cad-
res of people who are much like one another, in
national origin, gender, ethnicity, and education.
As this starts to change, there will be increasing
needs for rigorous methods to enable people with
diverse backgrounds and personalities to inquire
into complex issues-including why so little diver-
sity prevails at senior management levels. I do not
expect these changes to be easy, but I do expect
those organizations that excel in harnessing the
power of variety to have considerable advantages
in attracting and retaining diverse talent, as well
as in achieving business results.
A related domain is increasing societal expecta-
tions for large organizations to confront the social
and environmental costs of global industrial de-
velopment. I believe that the unintended by-prod-
ucts of globalization are likely to eventually re-
quire fundamental shifts in the modus operandi of
multinational corporaItions, who will increasingly
50 Academy of Management Executive
be held accountable for results of their actions
beyond shareholder return. For example, European
Union countries are leading the world in setting
increasing standards for eliminating waste and
toxic components of products. Building a car or a
computer with no toxic materials and which is 100
per cent re-manufacturable or recyclable repre-
sents an immense technical and social learning
challenge. It will require not only new design and
engineering know-how but new business models,
whose implementation will threaten political and
institutional established interests and therefore
will require sophisticated interpersonal learning
skills. So, too, will the requirement for people in
business to work increasingly in collaboration
with counterparts from NGOs and governmental
organizations. For example, the war between en-
vironmental NGOs and corporations has thwarted
rather than aided innovations desperately needed
for alternative energy and transport infrastruc-
tures and to move toward a zero-waste economy.
Fortunately, leaders on all sides are starting to
recognize this. But crossing these institutional
boundaries effectively will require learning skills
that few possess today.
I recently asked a colleague who has worked on
many highly successful projects around the world
that involved former adversaries eventually learn-
ing together: "What does such learning require?"
He said that people must get to a point where they
see that their established ways of coping with their
problems are clearly not going to suffice. As apart-
heid was ending, key leaders from all sides in
South Africa started to see this. Not enough leaders
in Israel, Palestine, and other Middle Eastern coun-
tries yet see this.
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May
People must get to a point where they
see that their established ways of coping
with their problems are clearly not going
to suffice.
There can be great needs to learn. But so long as
people feel that their conventional ways of han-
dling their affairs can work, they are not yet moti-
vated to really break out of their habitual ways of
doing things. Consequently, learning of the sort
that Argyris and Schon advocate still largely oc-
curs on the margin. The real opportunities for
methods like theirs will come when such learning
is no longer an option, something I expect to see
with increasing frequency in the future.
Endnotes
'Argyris, C. 1991.Teaching smart people how to learn. Har-
vard Business Review, May-June: 99-109 (reprint No. 91301).
2 Vasella, D. Temptation is all around us. Fortune, 18 Novem-
ber 2002: 109-116.
Peter M. Senge is a senior lec-
turerat the Massachusetts Insti-
U, x -8 t tute of Technology. He received
his Ph.D. in management from
MIT. He is the author of the
* > {b widely acclaimed book The Fifth
Discipline: The Art and Practice
of the Learning Organization
(1990). The Financial Times (2000)
and Business Week (October
2001) named him as one of
the world's "top management
gurus." Contact: psenge@MIT.
edu.