Thomas Hicks, the Washington Post’s military reporter, is most recently in the news for his book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, a history of how the situation in Iraq degenerated to the current state. (At the link, you’ll find a very good interview with Hicks.) But I’m mentioning him here because of his earlier book, Making the Corps.

He decided to write Making the Corps when he was with a Marine Corps unit facing action in one of our wars. He didn’t quite understand what was going on, and a corporal explained to him the unit’s objectives and how that fit in with the overall strategy. He was so impressed by the corporal’s demeanor and knowledge that he decided to look into the process by which the US Marine Corps trains its men.

Making the Corps is the result, and it’s a fascinating read. Among other things, he discovered that Marines routinely write and publish articles in their magazines that critique (i.e., criticize) specific actions and decisions that were made by current officers—a practice that, when Hicks mentioned it to an Army officer, made him blanch and say that, in the Army, this would be a career-ending move.

But it’s exactly this openness to criticism from within that makes the Marine Corps a learning organization. Chris Argyris is probably the leading thinker and researcher on organizational learning, and it’s interesting how the Marine Corps has put many of his ideas into practice. As I write this, I wonder whether Chris Argyris actually worked with the Corps, or if they developed their practices on their own.

A few examples: Argyris has found that executives generally have two codes of action: what Argryris calls the theory in use (how the executive acts in a given situation) and the espoused theory (how the executive says that he acts). The split between the two can be large, especially in a high-level executive who’s less apt to get feedback that points out the contrast between his expressed beliefs and his actions in fact—the contradictions between what he says and what he does.

For example, our President (George W. Bush), clearly believes (and frequently states) that he “does what he says.” Yet anyone with half a brain cell has observed many instances of Bush’s saying one thing and doing another. It is likely that he’s totally unaware of this: who is going to point out the contradiction to him?

Argyris in fact found the same situation with a group of young company presidents (presidents under 35 years of age who were running a company of $50 million a year or more). He brought together, over a six-month period, a group of six of these presidents, who could and did readily provide the missing feedback to each other. They were surprised at how frequently their stated theory of action failed to match the actions they actually took. With that feedback, they began to learn.

In organizations generally, Argyris found that there are things that are not be mentioned (questions not to be asked, etc.) and, in addition, one can’t mention that these things are not to be mentioned: a double layer of denial: you can’t talk about that, and you can’t even talk about how you can’t talk about it. Totally sealed off—and thus learning cannot occur.

This strikes me as intimately related to the insights in Daniel Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths, which I mentioned earlier. Indeed, I would now like to read Goleman’s book in the context of Argyris’s work (or vice versa).

I’m sort of losing the thread here, but basically: the Marine Corps has found a way to be a learning organization, in contrast to the Army, for example. The development of the Marine Expeditionary Force, a complete package for a military mission, is one example: the Marines had this ready to go when a number of recent conflicts broke out, while the Army was still struggling with their traditional method of deployment, which requires an enormous footprint and heavy supply chain. (Hicks discusses this in the book.)

In parallel, Chris Argyris has discovered and articulated a number of insights into obstacles to and techniques for organizational learning—things like the two theories of action, double-loop learning, and the like. I’ve given away my Chris Argyris library, but some titles worth looking at:

Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness, by Argyris and Daniel Schon—this is an excellent introduction, since with the co-author things are more spelled out than in some of Argyris’s other books.

Increasing Leadership Effectiveness, by Argyris.

Here’s a complete bibliography of Argyris’s books and articles.

As you read these books, it will strike you that Bush has shaped his Administration and his practices almost exactly to prevent learning—in that, I fear, he is typical of many American companies. Perhaps it’s a natural result of a strictly hierarchical structure, which makes the Marine Corps example so fascinating: how they managed to avoid those mistakes. Go, and read. And think.