Harvard Business Review
on
Knowledge Management
Article # 4 – 6
MIS 580 – Knowledge Management
By Nichalin Suakkaphong
(nichalin@email.arizona.edu)
Agenda

Teaching Smart People How to
Learn

Putting Your Company’s Whole
Brain to Work

How to Make Experience Your
Company’s Best Teacher
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1
Teaching Smart People How to
Learn

Author: Chris Argyris

Originally published in May-June 1991

Key Points:
 The
 How
learning dilemma
Professionals Avoid Learning
 Defensive
 Learning
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Reasoning and the Doom Loop
How to Reason Productively
2
The Learning Dilemma
Companies that try to become a learning organization tend
to make 2 mistakes
They define learning too narrow as problem solving
1)

They focus on external environment not look inward

Skilled professionals are good at “single loop” learning

Professionals become so defensive and do not learn
They assume that learning is a matter of motivation
2)

Companies focus on building an environment that creates
motivated and committed employees
Double loop learning is not a function of how people
feel. It is a reflection of how they think.
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3
How Professionals Avoid Learning

Studied group: Management Consultants
 Almost

all of them got MBA from top 4 B-Schools
 They
highly committed to their work
 They
are well paid
Issue:
 Continuous

improvement program did not persist
Observations:
 Consultants
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embodied the learning dilemma
4
How Professionals Avoid Learning

The consultants were very defensive in the post-project
continuous improvement meeting.
“The client didn’t think we could help them.”
“At times, our managers were not up to speed
before they walked into the client meetings”
“Our leaders are unavailable and distant.”
Consultant
The problem with the
professionals’ claims is not that
they are wrong but that they
aren’t useful.
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“Why they were
defensive ???”
- Not their attitude
- Not about commitment
5
Defensive Reasoning


“Theory-in-use” – to describe human’s actions
1.
To remain in unilateral control
2.
To maximize “winning” and minimize “losing”
3.
To suppress negative feelings
4.
To be as “rational” as possible
Defensive reasoning is used to avoid
embarrassment or threat, feeling vulnerable or
incompetent
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Defensive Reasoning

More facts about consultants

Their lives are primarily full of successes

They are driven internally by an unrealistically high
ideal of performance

They always compare themselves with other best
around them

They do not appreciate being required to compete
openly with each other

High fear of failure and a propensity to feel shame
and guilt
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7
The Doom Loop

Happens when they don’t do the job perfectly

Symptom:
 Bad-mouthing
 High

clients
sense of despondency
Performance Evaluation also pushes a
professional into the doom loop
 Defensive
reasons: “Subjective and biased”, “Up-orout is inconsistent with learning”
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8
Learning How to Reason
Productively

Companies can use the consultants’ self-esteem to
teach people how to reason in a new way

Identify inconsistency in their espoused and actual
theories of action

Analytical & data-driven

Start with senior managers

When making claims, use examples

When respond, respond in a kind.
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Summary
The learning dilemma
 How Professionals Avoid Learning
 Defensive Reasoning and the Doom Loop
 Learning How to Reason Productively

Can this idea be used outside
consulting firms?
How about other countries/cultures?
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10
Agenda

Teaching Smart People How to
Learn

Putting Your Company’s Whole
Brain to Work

How to Make Experience Your
Company’s Best Teacher
7/12/2016
11
Putting Your Company’s Whole
Brain to Work

Author: Dorothy Leonard & Susaan Straus

Originally published in July-August 1997

Key Points:
 The
Creative Process
 How
We Think
 How
We Act
 Caveat
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Emptor
12
The Creative Process
Possible Outcome
Innovate or
Fall Behind
Causes
Struggle to innovate • Managers avoid clash
of ideas
due to “Comfortable
clone syndrome”
• Everyone thinks alike
Struggle to innovate • Managers don’t understand
due to disagreement how to manage employees
with different styles
• Employees don’t
understand or respect one
another
Successfully
innovate
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• “Creative abrasion”
13
How We Think


Cognitive Preferences

Approaches to perceiving and assimilating data, making
decisions, solving problems, and relating to other people.

Not skills or abilities. Not rigid.
Cognitive Differences


Varying cognitive preferences
Cognitive Distinction: Left-brained / Right-brained

Not accurate physiologically

Left > Analytical, logical, and sequential approach

Right > Intuitive, value-based, and nonlinear approach
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14
How We Think

Preferences reveal in work styles and decisionmaking activities

People tend to choose professions that reward
their own combination of preferences

The best way to assess the thinking styles is to
use diagnostic Instruments

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®)

Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI)
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15
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Extraversion
Very
Clear
Clear
Moderate
Slight
Slight
Moderate
Clear
Very
Clear
Intraversion
Sensing
iNtuition
Thinking
Feeling
Judging
Perceiving
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The Herrmann Brain Dominance
Instrument
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A
Upper Left
Problem Solver
Mathematical
Technical
Analyzer
Logical
D
Upper Right
Conceptualizer
Synthesizer
Imaginative
Holistic
Artistic
B
Lower Left
Planner
Controlled
Conservative
Organizational
Administrative
C
Lower Right
Talker
Musical
Spiritual
Emotional
Interpersonal
17
How We Think
All diagnostic instruments agree that:

Preferences are neither inherently good nor
inherently bad

Distinguishing preferences emerge early in our
lives

We can learn to act outside our preferred styles

Understanding others’ preferences helps people
communicate and collaborate
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How We Act

Instruments will help you understand
yourself and help others understand
themselves

Challenge is to use the insights
 To
create new processes
 To
encourage new behaviors that will help
innovations effort succeed
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How We Act

Understand yourself
 Identify
your own style
 Your
cognitive preferences may stifle employees’
creativities
 The
biggest barrier to recognize the contributions of
people who are unlike you is your ego.

Forget the golden rule
 Don’t
treat people the way you want to be treated
 Tailor
communications to receiver: analytical mind,
action-oriented, people-oriented, or future oriented
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20
How We Act

Create whole-brained teams
 Not

just the right brain or the left brain e.g.

People-oriented person in mgmt team

Computer scientists & anthropologists

Computer scientists & artists

Left-brained designer & right-brained designer

Invites leader from various disciplines to visit for short
“sabbaticals”
Look for the ugly ducking
 If
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you cannot hire new people, look within your company
21
The Herrmann Brain Dominance
Instrument
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22
How We Act


Manage the creative process

Clarify why you are working together: Common goal

Make your operating guidelines explicit

Set up an agenda ahead of time that explicitly
provides enough time for both divergent and
convergent discussion
Depersonalize conflict

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Diagnosing and understand cognitive preferences
23
Caveat Emptor

Personality analysis of type is no more than a helpful tool.

It doesn’t measure ability or intelligence

It doesn’t predict performance

Preference tend to be relatively stable but still can change
depending on life experiences

Only trained individuals should administer the diagnostic
instruments (Avoid misinterpreted and misused)
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24
Summary
The Creative Process
 How We Think
 How We Act
 Caveat Emptor

Do you agree with all the suggestions?
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25
Agenda

Teaching Smart People How to
Learn

Putting Your Company’s Whole
Brain to Work

How to Make Experience Your
Company’s Best Teacher
7/12/2016
26
How to Make Experience Your
Company’s Best Teacher

Author: Art Kleiner & George Roth

Originally published in Sep-Oct 1997

Key Points:
 A Different Approach
 Create
 Why
 The
7/12/2016
to Institutional Learning
a Learning History Piece by Piece
Learning Histories Work
Future of Learning Histories
27
A Different Approach to Institutional
Learning

Not as easy as individual life experience

“Learning history”
 A written
narrative of a company’s recent set of critical
episodes (20-100 pages)
 Developed
 Used
as the basis for group discussions
 Based
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at MIT’s Center of Organizational Learning
on an ancient practice: community storytelling
28
Create a Learning History Piece by
Piece
Title
Full-column prologue …………………………………………
…...………………………………………..
Commentary, insights,
and questions by the
learning historians
Title or position of participant:
Participant’s story with the use of
quotations…………………………
…………………………………
Full-column interlude …………………………………………
…...………………………………………..
Generalizable lessons
can also be provided
by the learning
historians here.
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Title or position of participant:
Participant’s story with the use of
quotations…………………………
…………………………………
29
Why Learning Histories Work

They build trust

They raise issues that people would like to talk
about but have not had the courage to discuss
openly

They have proved successful at transferring
knowledge from one part of the company to
another

They help build a body of generalizable
knowledge about management
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30
The Future of Learning Histories

Learning history is emerging from its
experimental stage.

We will know more about this tool’s effectiveness
in several years’ time.
Do you think learning history will work
for you/ your employer ?
What is the current situation of the
learning histories?
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Questions & Answers


References:

HBR on Knowledge Management

http://www.mbti.org/the_mbti_instrument/home.cfm

http://www.typelogic.com/

http://ccs.mit.edu/lh/
Thank you !!!
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