Review a decision through three loops of feedback

After a decision plays out, ask in turn whether the action was right, whether the strategy was right, and what your attention was doing.

Pourquoi ça marche

Argyris and Schön distinguished single-loop learning (correcting actions to hit the same goal) from double-loop learning (questioning the goals and assumptions themselves). Torbert adds a third loop: feedback on the quality of attention that chose the strategy in the first place. In his account the Achiever reliably uses single-loop feedback, the Strategist double-loop, and the Alchemist cultivates triple-loop awareness, so practicing the deeper loops exercises the capacity that distinguishes later action logics.

Comment faire

1. Pick a recent decision whose outcome you now know.
2. Single loop: what did you do, what happened, and what action would have closed the gap?
3. Double loop: what goal, strategy or assumption made that action seem right, and would a different one have served better?
4. Triple loop: what were you paying attention to — and not paying attention to — when you chose that strategy? What were you feeling and wanting in that moment?
5. Write one change at each loop, and notice which loop was hardest to answer honestly.

Données probantes

Single- and double-loop learning come from Argyris and Schön (1978). Starr and Torbert (2005) set out triple-loop feedback as awareness of attention itself and link each loop to a later action logic; Torbert and Associates (2004) develop the same scheme. The structured review is an application of that theory and has not been tested as an intervention. (mechanistic)

Triple-loop awareness is described by its authors as partly beyond words, and a written review can only point toward it. No controlled study shows this review changes a person’s action logic.

Sources

• Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
• Starr, A., & Torbert, B. (2005). Timely and Transforming Leadership Inquiry and Action: Toward Triple-loop Awareness. Integral Review, 1, 85–97.
• Torbert, B., & Associates (2004). Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Erreur fréquente

Stopping at the first loop and calling it reflection. Most after-action reviews only ask what to do differently next time, which leaves the goal and the attention behind it untouched.