An Article Review on Teaching Smart People How to Learn By Tracy June C. Dy

An Article Review on Teaching Smart People How to Learn

                  Competitive success increasingly depends on learning. But most people don’t know how to learn. This has been the recurring dilemma of most organizations who seek for continuous organizational learning. The problem doesn’t necessarily lie to employees’ inability to learn technical skills or be equipped with intellectual knowledge but more on the employees’ attitude to learning.

                  As cited by the article written by Chris Argyris, effective learning is not a matter of the right attitudes or motivating behavior but rather a product of the way people reason about their own behavior. This technically is true to most organizations, and more surprisingly learning has been ineffective not on the lower level but on the higher level of management. Most of the people who comprise the higher level are those who are highly successful in terms of academic credentials. According to the article, these people are the professionals who more or less already have masters degree or doctors degree on organizational management or some other disciplines deemed to be useful in managing and effecting success to the organization. Because these people are academically equipped already, they see themselves as individuals who are far better than the others. To prove that they really are, the organizational structure is their best evidence. They are ranked among the high ranking officials that because of their exceptional curriculum vitae, people sought them out for advices and organizational decisions. Since they are considered the best or experts in their field, to fail is not an option. And this is where the problem comes in. Because these professionals considered themselves as experts already, they don’t see themselves fail. If they do, they usually point finger to others for they could not afford to accept any part of the blame. They tend to forget that there could also be learning in failure. Thus the saying, “Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty and persistence” is indeed applicable in this situation. However, these individuals could not own up to any lapses or shortcomings during the tenure of their leadership. Instead of owning the responsibility they become defensive to protect themselves for a possible loss of face.

                  It is to be noted however, that the company’s best interest is always their priority. Commitment was never an issue as they keep the company at competitive advantage as well as loyalty. They have invested so much to the company to even think of failing. That is why, when faced on a circumstance wherein their expertise or general contribution is put in question they tend to become defensive. For most of the time, if these individuals have to explain why the project was not really a success, they tend to blame others other than themselves. It would be easier for them to withdraw themselves from the problem since they could always claim that they’re better than that and that could not be possibly a product of their expertise. Furthermore, it is to be noted that they don’t disagree as well to continuous learning. They even believe that a company who seeks continuous learning is way better than other companies who are more or less settled already on status quo. But the problem is, because they are highly intellectual already they don’t find themselves a factor to the blockage of continuous learning. A mere refusal to admit that they may have been part of the inefficiency of the operation is one clear evidence already.

                  Pride and arrogance may be some of the factors for their defensive reasoning for they could not come to a realization that a problem may be because of them. There is pride in such a way that because they already hold masters or doctors degree, committing a mistake is least likely possible. Arrogance on the other hand because they already hold one of the high ranking position in the company that committing a mistake would mean an embarrassment to the lower ranking officials.  As an example based from the analyst personal experience, a problem occurred during one of the enrollment operations. Bottleneck of transactions and long queue lines was out of control which led to an outburst of complains from the clients. The head of the operation, who is a notable professional and has a notable experience in operations management tried to solve the problem by introducing a new system. As expected, there were some resistance to the new system but eventually the new system was implemented. Bottleneck was addressed in the meantime but the numbers of transactions processed were reduced to a very low level. Thus, creating more complaints from the clients. During the evaluation, the operation head was asked what caused the uproar from the clients. The operation head said that she did the best she could and even applied a new system but according to her, the system failed because of the incompetency of the tellers and the uncontrolled behavior of the clients. Little did the operation head knew that the new system may have solved a little of the bottleneck problem but it didn’t really addressed the problem. If only she listened to the suggestions of the tellers then she would have known and came up with a much better solution. In this particular situation, listening and learning from the actual experiences of the individuals who have direct interaction from the clients would have solved the problem. But because the operation head believed more on her capability to solve the problem at hand compared to her subordinates who were only undergraduate courses holder, she failed to deliver the efficiency in the operations.

                  The example mentioned above, is already common to most organizations. Just because individuals on the lower ranks failed to be more academically equipped compared to those on top doesn’t mean that they no longer are competent in solving problems as well. Organizational learning is not a one way process or a top – down process. Rather, organizational learning for it to be continuous should be observed in a two way process which means top – down and vice versa. But the article has made it clear already that people on top could be very difficult to accept this. It would be a long process and patience is needed for this endeavor to be successful. For one, to change the way a person reason on his behavior is like trying to purify toxic infected water or trying to convince your great grandparents to agree on premarital sex as a normal activity. Open communication will always be the important factor to this success. Open communication grounded by a good rapport among these professionals could be one way of slowly changing the way they see things especially on their behavior on learning. Providing an environment on which they can openly share their thoughts about the matter at hand and being open to the suggestions and or criticisms from others will eventually lead to an effective organizational learning. Learning from one’s mistake is good start already. Thus, to end this article review the analyst concludes that organizational learning could be summarized through the saying, “In every defeat, there’s glory. The key is to learn to stand up every time you stumble.”