Competitive success depends on learning, but most people, including professionals in leadership positions, are not very good at it. Learning is a function of how people reason about their own behavior. Yet most people engage in defensive reasoning when confronted with problems. They blame others and avoid examining critically the way they have contributed to problems. Companies need to make managers' and employees' reasoning patterns a focus of continuous improvement efforts.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Smart people can't learn
Comment: The title is very interesting and so is the article. The article walks through the reason why smart people can't (won't) learn and describes an approach for breaking through this mode of thinking.

The basic premise is that people with high levels of education have learned to play the learning game. They can't or won't admit they don't know something because in essence they would have to admit failure. They often become defensive in the face of failure and displace (rationalize) the blame for failure rather then looking for the root cause and examining their own involvement in the failure.

---