Good Communications

Good Communications that Block Learning by Chris Argyris originally published in 1994, predicted the following:

“Twenty-First-Century corporations will find it hard to survive, let alone flourish, unless they get better work from their employees. This does not necessarily mean harder work or more work. What it does necessarily mean is employees, who've learned to take active responsibility for their own behaviour, develop and share first-rate information about their jobs, and make good use of genuine empowerment to shape lasting solutions to fundamental problems.”

Eleven years later, how is this panning out?

I have not seen a willingness by people to share information which could result in ‘lasting solutions to fundamental problems’. Indeed I have not seen information and knowledge sharing at all unless individuals are paid handsomely first for their contribution. Information and knowledge is something that is currently obtainable at a premium price and human nature being what it is, people will not give this away unless there is a degree of personal gain.

I have seen the advent of opportunistic exploitation of intellectual property with the development of companies whose entire business consists of ‘buying’ patents and then ‘leasing’ them to others. Cost cutting, with a view to maximising profits for investors and increasing exploitation of all forms of resources and increasing evidence of the consequences of policies of short term gains being favoured over longer term solutions.

I see people who are forced by the official destruction of collective bargaining opportunities through legislation or the lack of legislation to agree to terms and conditions of employment that are heading us back to an era that is redolent of the worst excesses of the early industrial revolution.

In recent years I have also seen the following:

1. a greater number of household in which both adults are required by economic circumstances to engage in the work force with consequences for the welfare and development of children;


2. an increase in the number of people who are classified as the ‘working poor’ where individuals work all day and are still classified as being in poverty;


3. a widening of the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’;


4. an increase in the price of basic goods that are essential for the maintenance of life;


5. an increase in the capability and willingness of organisations to make use of the cheap and plentiful labour forces that exist in China, India, South East Asia and the former East European countries;


6. an increase in the use of ‘risk management’ techniques in and by management rather than a more expensive form of regular maintenance, a policy with enormous consequences and costs when the risk is realised;

Argyris also suggested that:

“The new, but now familiar techniques of corporate communication-focus groups, surveys, management by- walking-around-can block organizational learning even as they help solve certain kinds of problems. These techniques do help gather simple, single-loop information. But they also promote defensive reasoning by encouraging employees to believe that their proper role is to criticize management while the proper role of management is to take action and fix whatever is wrong. Worse yet, they discourage double-loop learning, which is the process of asking questions not only about objective facts but also about the reasons and motives behind those facts. Double-loop learning encourages people to examine their own behaviour, take personal responsibility for their own action and inaction, and surface the kind of potentially threatening or embarrassing information that can produce real change.”

Have we seen changes in the methods of communication? Indeed we have. More and more use is being made of emails and less and less use is made of paper. Where organisations do not keep an accurate record of the communications in appropriate records management repositories the evidence of corporate or individual behaviour is as transient or non existent as the records which could provide some forms of accountability. The situation described by Argyris in 1994 may have changed in that communications have been ‘enhanced’ by electronic means, but the techniques which lead to single loop communications are still around and widely in use. Thus they are still counterproductive.

Will it change in the next ten years?

Let’s just hope that we are alive and there is a work force to participate in so that we can find out.