Summary of "Teaching Smart People How To Learn"

In " Teaching Smart People How To Learn '' by Chris Argyris. The author has tried to describe a learning dilemma that companies will face. He has mentioned that professionals are really good at a term called "single loop" learning. They have collected experience from past and will use these experience to solve future problem. Most professionals are highly educated and success in college life or in previous jobs. Therefore it is really difficult for them to accept failure that might caused by them. As the author said, "many professionals have extremely brittle personalities''(Argyris, 6). When conflicts appear these professionals are trying to defense, protect or even drawing themselves out of responsibilities. Once they are criticized by others about failure, it will leads despair in order to push them to escape. On the other hand, companies' CEOs have the responsibility to teach their subordinates how to learn to face failure instead of avoiding. However, even most of CEOs have tried but only few success. They believe that they are doing hardly to reduce pressure and trying to find some more efficiency ways to improve but they forget to change themselves. They always face a dilemma such as "kept urging them to "think of the organization as a whole." On the other, he kept calling for actions department budget cuts, for example-that placed them directly in competition with each other."(Argyris, 8). Thus, conflicts still exist. An successful conversation only exist when both sides are start to talk their inner thoughts and they try to agree each other. They need to understand "learning about their own group dynamics and addressing some generic problems in client-consultant relationships"(Argyris, 11). It is more important to understand their role in the organization than just solving problems or complaining.