In it, he explained that success in the marketplace increasingly depends on learning;yet most people do not know how to learn. What's more, those members of the organisation that are best at learning are in fact, not very good at it. And these people are well-educated, high-powered, high-commitment professionals who occupy key leadership positions in the modern corporations. (hmm, makes me think of all the scholars..heehee)
Here is an extract from his wonderful article. You can purchase the article from HBR.
Every company faces a learning dilemma: the smartest people find it the hardest to learn.
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, more 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 they 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 critical 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 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 professional 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 whenever 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 most.
Read this article in full at www.hbsp.harvard.edu.
This is interesting because once, the CEO of one of my clients replied me with "The reason why we succeed is because we have a probia of failure" when I tried explaining to a group of leaders that failures are necessary for innovation to take place. He further explained that when there is a high profiled failure, its very obvious to all the colleagues that this person had disappointed and failed to achieve a result and that person would have difficulty climbing up the corporate ladder and therefore, people are less inclined to take risks and therefore, risk failures. When I think of all the corporate high-flyers, yeah, that makes some sense. These people are academically outstanding, rarely risk their necks and above all, excel in single loop learning and weak in double-loop learning.
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