Chris Argyris is one of the most
important and influential thinkers in the last 100 years. Yet, few people are
aware of his efforts in organizational development and human behavior. Argyris
wrote about a number of different areas of organizational change management.
Perhaps one of his most important contributions has been in the area of Single-loop
and Double-loop learning for individuals and organizations.
Single-loop learning is when an
individual or group undertakes an action and the result is not what they expect
or believe be the result should be. So they go about “correcting” their approach
on the assumption that they must have done something “wrong” the first time. As
a result of the “correction” they expect a different result. Some of you may
recognize this as the classic definition of “insanity”. Others have called these
“self-fulfilling” prophecies. Doing the same kinds of things over and over and
expecting different results. Single-loop Learning results from creating what
Argyris called “governing variables”: boundaries or limits that an individual
or group creates that stifle creativity and ways of thinking to within known
environments.
Double-loop Learning (also known
as causal-feedback loop learning) is when an individual or group undertakes an
action and gets a result, and then reflects immediately on both the action and
the result to see if a completely new, innovative and creative approach is
needed to achieve a different result. There is no “correction” needed or
desired. Rather the “governing variables” must be changed or eliminated to
allow for a new way of thinking or seeing how to achieve the result. Double-loop
Learning makes little or no assumptions that the expected or desired results we
originally set are the right or correct results. Double-loop Learning lets the
action-results-reflection loop determine the appropriate result.
So how does the work of Argyris
help us with ITIL and ITSM? It helps us to see that we first need to put in
place Monitor-Control Loops (Single-loop Learning) to ensure our processes and
stages work according to expectation. More importantly we need to move beyond
Monitor-Control Loops to Double-loop Learning. Once we have a Monitor-Control
Loop in place we no longer have to “correct” a process to improve it. We have
to ensure that the “norms” (“governing variables”) that we establish for our Monitor-Control
Loops are the best, most creative and innovative they can be to achieve optimal
results, value and quality for our customers. The “norms” are the measures and
metrics we put in place against which we compare a process, stage or ITSM as
whole to see if it is producing the expected result. If a process is not
meeting the norm we can improve it or we can alter the norm to achieve a
different result.
Let’s use a typical measure as an
example: Availability. If the availability of a service is not what we expect,
we could undertake all sorts of efforts to “correct” our actions. These could include redundancy, failover, more
procedures, etc. Or (using Double-loop Learning) we could look at the desired
result (the “norm”) and determine if that level of availability is really
possible or if the customer even needs that level of availability. Thus
by changing the “norm” or “governing variables” under which we work, we could
see that we are already providing the desired or best level of availability for
our customers.
If we want to make ITSM and ITIL
work for us, sometimes we need to take a look at the way we think about our
approach to ensuring the expected and desired results that our customers
desire. This includes making a shift from Single-Loop Learning to Double-Loop
Learning.
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