Why Governments Fail to Learn

When Performance is Structually Stuck

In 1974, Chris Argyris, professor of organizational behavior at Harvard University, coined a concept “Double Loop Thinking,” and “Single Loop Thinking.” These terms speak to how organizations, large and small, execute actions, make decisions and learn from outcomes:

• Single Loop - organizations produce goals and plans, and then execute processes and policies aligned to those goals - the focus is on executing procedures and processes

• Double Loop - organizations add an assessment and evaluation process to Single Loop Thinking to determine whether the goals and strategies of the organization are aligned to its purpose - the focus is on analyzing and improving

A simple example: a thermostat has the goal of keeping a room at 70 degrees, so it calls on the air conditioning system to produce heat if the room falls to 67 degrees, and calls for cold air if the room temperature rises to 74. The thermostat is programmed using a Single Loop perspective.

By contrast, the thermostat does not assess why 70 degrees would be optimal for the home or the family living there because that would exceed its programming. This is Double Loop Thinking. Argyris provides a corporate example in his own words.

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Another simple example of Single and Double Loop thinking: reading a book. A Single Loop process would be developing the efficiency of reading each chapter, starting with the introduction and moving through the book as it was written. Chapter 1, followed by subsequent chapters 2 through the final.

Double Loop thinking would be quite different, as it would take on a reverse engineered process of how authors write books: read the conclusion at the end first, followed by the introduction to understand the points the author is making. The final step would be to read relevant chapters where the reader has questions or needs more information. The purpose being to extract relevant information out of the book dramatically more efficiently than the Single Loop process.

The vast majority of organizations live and operate in a single loop world. Many business organizations are stuck in a single loop model and prioritize process execution over learning, change and innovation. Organizations subject to competition find that they must learn or they will lose out to their competition. As a result, many strive to develop Double Loop practices and the organizational structures to create accountability in support of them.

There are two key barriers for organizations in general in their ability to learn and perform at a double loop level:

• Information Flows: information about actual organizational performance does not get to the decision makers because of the political games lower level managers play to avoid blame or looking bad. In many organizations, department managers hide, obfuscate or overly summarize the performance of operations to fly under executive radars. In many cases, managers are not purposefully being misleading, they may merely over-summarize operational performance because they believe that strategic decision makers don’t want to be weighted down by the “details.”

• Organizational Culture: many organizations punish “bad news.” Learning often implies mistakes being made, then corrective actions are taken to mitigate mistakes going forward. Executive management has more control over the organizational culture than they think, but often the culture conforms to what they do, than to what they say. Executives who proverbially shoot messengers and fire competent employees who make mistakes are integral in creating a culture that rejects bad news. Likewise, many organizational cultures are driven by loyalty to personality, than loyalty to truth and facts. Lower level managers may choose not to report news up the chain of command because they don’t want to embarrass their boss.

Governments deal with both of these barriers too, but also have unique ones that lock them into single loops. First, because senior leaders (e.g. President, Vice President, Congress, Cabinet) are elected, any admission of regret or mistakes are career limiting by the electorate (in more democratic countries anyway). The 90+% reelection rate of members of Congress are a function of Members not admitting mistakes, though they make many.

There is a chasm between government bureaucracies and elected politicians, particularly reformers, due to civil service protections. Civil servants tend to be dedicated to the execution of pre-designed procedures and, due to protections against performance management, are not incentivized to improve procedures, nor consider the outcomes against the goals of their agency. Civil service protections create a “this too shall pass” mantra - when politicians promote cuts or improved quality and services, bureaucrats have little incentive to implement changes. They can simply ignore cabinet level leaders and politicians largely because of those civil service protections and the fact that presidents and cabinet members are limited by terms of office.

Secondarily, the culture of government is based on growth of size and scope, largely regardless of positive outcomes. This makes government inefficient, as government grows its inputs, detached from generating positive benefits to the citizens. The Department of Defense, for example, spends nearly $800 billion American tax dollars and could not even negotiate an orderly withdrawal out of Afghanistan. In this case, the outcome was 13 dead American soldiers, at least $10 billion in taxpayer funded military equipment given to the Taliban, yet no senior government leader was held accountable. Compare this during the administration of President George W. Bush, when he told the American people that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” Hundreds of young men lost of their lives or had their lives permanently altered because the United States likes to fight wars in the Middle East. The American federal government does not seem to learn.

Accountability, whether punitive or reflective, is a requirement to organizationally adopt Double Loop thinking and, thus, the ability to learn and adapt. Information must flow from the lowest operating process to decision makers such that decisions about goals, objectives and mission can be made timely. An organization’s culture should support the evaluation of mistakes and not either be overly punitive, nor immovable.

The fundamental problem with government’s lack of improvement oriented learning is that they receive higher and higher revenue without any commensurate improvement in outcomes, either better services, more efficient services or even outsourced services (to private companies). The analogy would be the drug addict that requires more drug (input) to get the same high (output). Over time, tax rates or fiscal borrowing will rise disproportionately to services, such as education, defense or law enforcement. At some point, government spending will overtake the economy’s ability to pay for it. There are many who argue, with credibility, that we are already there.