After Chris Argyris we Ask, What Learning Loop are we in?

When Fred Nickols shared the news of Chris Argyris passing away, it was a rather litmus test of sorts on the ODNet list. Firstly, it was a relay from Prof Elena Antonacopoulou, of GNOSIS, University of Liverpool Management School. Secondly, there were very few who surmised his contributions to Organisation Development, as compared to when some greats in Organisation Development passed away earlier this year. 

Elsewhere outside of the ODNet, there was a fitting tribute from a Harvard Professor of Information Technology who began with this quote ““When a sage dies all are his kin and should mourn the passing.” – The Talmud". 

Prof. Andrew Macafee  says little about him, and yet; the little he shares stuns with its accuracy and impact. “I wish his work got the attention it deserves. Part of the reason why not, I believe, is that he was not only clear about organizational failure modes, but also about how much time and effort were needed to get past them. He didn’t offer quick fixes or ‘the 4-hour organization.’ Instead, he stressed that it was a real slog to make things legitimately better. I think his honesty cost him some attention, probably even a lot of it, but that’s a tradeoff I’m sure he was happy with. Chris was the most intellectually honest scholar I’ve met; watering down his medicine to make it go down easier would have been anathema to him.”

It was in the early 1990s that I began reading Overcoming Organisational Defenses. I was an ‘internal’ then eking a living out of holding up a promise for the brave new world of Human Resources Development in a family managed firm.  Fortunately for me, the young scion there took a fancy for the very literature Argyris penned from research. As business leader, he began to see the minefields and bypasses in our firm with. I was in awe of the thinking and the lucidity in Argyris’ reasoning. It drew parallel with the raw freshness of Igor Ansoff’s work on Corporate Strategy of the 1960s. Heady were the days of investing in this line of work.  We went through the pain of learning that classical Organisation Development is without frills and fancy and a lot of hard work on cognitive patterns and emotional re-framing.

Later in my own academic work regarding the evaluation of Organisation Development, I began to see the utility of theory in action, especially insofaras the life of an interventionist is concerned. The era of ‘whole systems thinking’ was picking up currency in interventions too. Today, when there is tension in the field out there to examine effectiveness of organisations beyond its own boundaries, it is but natural to enquire if the theory-in-use at one’s own firm would be similar or different to those firms outside it. When I got to meet Chris at San Francisco in 2006, he was just done with a superlative demonstration of how Appreciate Inquiry as a construct was lacking in procedural elements of theorisation. Alone, he took on a room of nearly 100 practitioners and consultants in Organisation Development on the aspect of theorisation, and none could meet his reasoning prowess, despite them wanting to.

This is probably the closest reason I can think of as to why the late Ranjan Acharya decided to have me on his team. He was the essential learner, who wished to bring to his situation the most effective that learning could offer. I remember him peering through the expositions I made to explain my work, like a child letting the ocean of organisational learning wash over the infinite sponge that he was. All I can say is that today, 27^th November, Ranjan’s birth anniversary in 2013, the poignancy of Prof. Macafee’s quote from the Talmud, could not ring more truer.

In closing, I must mention that I had attempted a live application of Argyris theory in the week gone by. I held out the following Argyris tenets through a series of reflective questions I requested professors to engage each other with in the room.  ‘There seems to be a universal human tendency to design one’s actions consistently according to four basic values:

1. To remain in unilateral control;

2. To maximize winning and minimize losing;

3. To suppress negative feelings; and

4. To be as rational as possible – by which people mean defining clear objectives and evaluating their behavior in terms of whether or not they have achieved them.’

Principals and Professors alike huddled in private with me in the lunch break to say that their understanding of organisational learning shifted most with my session. Needless to say, I was proving to myself, that Argyris was not only original, but pure of thought and honest in action. I think the mention of what I state hereafter really got under the skin of educationists who wished to know the relevance of Learning Organisations. 

I asked "And would you know how he got to doing what he is now famous for in organisational learning? Well, he reflected deeply on his former secretary’s statement when he returned to collect his personal belongings from the military establishment that he served. She told him in a pleasant tone and cheerful voice, which Chris had never seen or heard before in work-life, that while in office, he was seen as like a terror and difficult to speak with from that standpoint. So, driving back home, he thought why was so much human behavior so self-frustrating, particularly in organizations? In particular, his devotion was to the question, what is it that prevents people from stating their truths in their organisation(s)?"

Seldom do such souls as Argyris walk this planet, unfettered, pristine and uncompromising in inquiry. Some learning can be unpleasant too, is it not?