Organizational Learning

June 2025

• Jun 20, 2025ExplainersHistory of Organizational LearningSix decades traced from the behavioral theory of the firm and cybernetic feedback through Argyris and Schon's single-loop and double-loop distinction, Senge's five disciplines and the SECI model. Edmondson's 1999 hospital study found teams reporting more medication errors performed better, because safer teams surfaced the errors every team made. Argote and Epple measured learning rates varying tenfold across organizations doing identical work.35 MIN34.1k

May 2025

• May 5, 2025CultureLearning Culture ExplainedLearning culture is the attitude toward knowledge that decides whether training does anything at all, and the evidence is counterintuitive. Amy Edmondson's nursing research found that teams with higher psychological safety reported medication errors at higher rates, not because they made more but because they surfaced them, so the teams that looked best were performing worst. Also covered: Project Aristotle, and the Xerox PARC, NASA and Nokia failures.24 MIN60.0k
• May 2, 2025CultureKnowledge Transfer ProblemsPolanyi's point that we know more than we can tell is the core obstacle: tacit knowledge sits in procedural memory below conscious access, so an expert is not withholding anything. Elizabeth Newton's tapping study showed the gap: tappers predicted listeners would name about 50 percent of the songs, and listeners identified 2.5 percent. Szulanski studied 122 best-practice transfers across eight companies and found the main barrier was absorptive, not motivational.32 MIN36.7k

October 2022

• Oct 7, 2022ConceptsDouble-Loop Learning: How Organizations Learn from ErrorsQuestioning the goal rather than refining the method. Argyris and Schon used a thermostat: single-loop learning corrects the temperature, double-loop asks whether 68 degrees is the right target at all. Their key distinction is between espoused theory, what people say they value, and theory-in-use, what their behavior reveals. Argyris found successful professionals defended their reasoning rather than examining it, because their identity depended on being right.22 MIN10.7k

August 2022

• Aug 3, 2022Work SkillsUnderstanding Knowledge Management in OrganizationsThe Society for Human Resource Management found that gap in 2019, and Deloitte put 42% of institutional knowledge in employees' heads rather than in any documented form. Nonaka's SECI model explains why documentation cannot close it, since the tacit-to-tacit transfer that happens by working alongside someone does not survive being written down. Leonard-Barton named the opposite failure, core rigidities, where a process works but nobody understands it well enough to change it.23 MIN7.1k

July 2022

• Jul 11, 2022Work SkillsUnderstanding Organizational Learning DynamicsWhy most organizations do not actually learn. Argyris distinguished single-loop learning, which corrects within the existing frame, from double-loop learning, which questions the frame itself, and found that people become skilled incompetent: very good at the defensive routines that prevent learning. Senge's five disciplines and Nonaka's SECI model describe the alternative, and the US Army's after-action review is the most widely deployed tool.21 MIN9.1k
• Jul 3, 2022ConceptsRetrospective Sensemaking: How We Reconstruct Our PastKarl Weick's claim is that meaning is made backward: people act first and construct the account afterward, driven by plausibility rather than accuracy. Arkes and colleagues showed the cost in 1981, when physicians given a case's true diagnosis revised their recall of their own earlier confidence upward. You cannot judge a decision process you can no longer remember being uncertain about, which is why contemporaneous records matter.21 MIN3.7k