Amplify Your Insight Impact with Double Loop Learning

In this lean, volatile environment, the pressure is on to prove how and why research matters.

The question on a lot of minds in the research world right now is, “How do I show the link between insights and business impact?”

As an Organizational Psychologist, I work with leaders to improve organizational functioning. For over two decades prior, I led Customer Insights Research teams for companies like Wells Fargo and Workday.

I want to invite you to think about business impact more broadly: Beyond usability, beyond new product innovation and, yes—even beyond bottom-line revenue. Let me explain.

Why now is different

We are living in unprecedented times of uncertainty on all levels—social, economic, political, and ecological. Maybe you’ve heard the acronym VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) to describe our world. But guess what? The stakes are getting higher, and there’s a new acronym in play: BANI. Brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible. Yikes.

No matter which framework resonates with your experience, the fact is that we’re operating in an era which McKinsey calls “perpetual upheaval.”

Organizations want predictability, certainty, and control, but we are no longer living in that world. Today, the only thing any of us can control is 1) how quickly we learn and 2) how we adapt based on that learning.

This is where research insights can have an enormous impact on organizational functioning and success when utilized to their full potential.

The role of researchers

Researchers help their organization and clients learn about customers “out there.” But that’s like only mining half the gold available. The other half involves using research to examine and align what’s going on “in here,” the internal organizational operating assumptions. Again, how fast we learn and adapt is among the few things any of us can control in this VUCA-BANI world. Therefore, research impact is essentially doubled when we widen our scope.

Researchers are not just insight transactors which can only supply short-term benefits. Researchers can act as agents of organizational learning, helping firms better align with their markets in the short, medium, and longer term. Researchers make customers visible to the organization by bringing in their voices, experiences, behaviors and attitudes. But we can’t stop there. We also can use customer insights to make the organization visible to itself.

We can achieve this by broadening our focus to examine research insights through a reflective and self-aware perspective, allowing us to challenge how the business perceives reality and makes decisions.

One of the founders of organizational development theory, Chris Argyris, calls this reflexive and reflective practice “double loop learning.” Single loop learning reinforces the status quo. Double loop learning goes deeper by exploring and questioning operating mental models that drive actions. Surfacing assumptions explicitly can lead to strategic course corrections, as well as illuminating unexplored opportunities. Leveraging insights reflexively as a powerful mechanism for learning can help organizations mitigate risk and supercharge innovation.

When the business-to-customer alignment goes awry

I collect examples of corporate missteps that could have been avoided by engaging in a double loop learning process. While I won’t share specifics here, you can reach out directly if you want to dish the dirt TMZ-style. I’m here for it. The incidents that knock organizations off track span the decades, cross industries, and can originate in any functional area.

Primarily these missteps originate by overvaluing bottom-line results and undervaluing critical dimensions of culture and human behavior and emotions. When people feel that their psychological contract is broken with a product, brand, or experience, trust collapses and the resultant financial and reputational damage can persist for years.

Delving into nuanced inquiries about complex cultural and psychological constructs like trust, loyalty, and meaning can help mitigate these unfortunate and costly missteps by challenging faulty assumptions that can lead to harmful financial and reputational consequences.

Budgeting tools for artists, not bankers

Here is a positive story from a bank in which research completely flipped how it thought about (mental model/assumptions) and designed (action taken) budgeting tools. To keep up with incumbents and new competitors, the bank planned to invest heavily in creating a whole suite of digital budgeting tools for their customers. Though they had some assumptions about what would be helpful, they wanted more insight into what their customers actually needed and would use.

Research found that, overwhelmingly, people did not keep a formal budget—nor did they have a strong desire to devote time to slicing and dicing their spending. Instead, they were much more interested in tracking their finances via online banking tools and adjusting accordingly.

Senior executives realized that their assumptions about what customers wanted and actual human behavior were in conflict. They had been focused on to-the-penny accuracy and defining discrete spending categories.

As one theater company owner and research participant shared, “I am not an accountant, I am an artist.” Over and over again, we heard that people were rabid trackers—closely monitoring transactions—but most were uninterested in the labor involved in careful budgeting.

After research, simplicity and automation became the strategic guiding principles for all budgeting tool initiatives moving forward. Customer-friendly approaches like, “What’s left?” replaced down-to-the-penny accuracy. Senior executives also admitted they had been looking at the problem space through the eyes of an MBA banker, not a typical customer.

How can you build in organizational learning into your engagements?

✔ Embrace your dual remit

Recognize that your role involves a dual remit—both interpreting customer behavior and analyzing the internal workings of your organization. Jay Galbraith’s Star Model framework can be a valuable tool in understanding how various organizational dynamics influence decision-making and customer interactions.

For instance, if you observe that customer perceptions are out of step with the organization’s direction, the Star Model can help you identify whether the issue stems from the company’s structure, processes, or incentives—allowing you to advise partners and executives on how to align customer needs and organizational strategies effectively.

✔ Uncover internal assumptions

Collect stakeholder assumptions at the start of a study.

• What do your stakeholders already believe?
• What do they think you will hear customers say?
• If they had to act today, what would they decide to do?

Asking these questions upfront will benefit you in a couple of ways. One, you will reduce hindsight bias (“we already knew that”) when you deliver your insights. And two, you will be primed as you go into the field with participants. You’ll be able to really hear where their lived experience is out of alignment with stakeholder assumptions, and can prepare for how to surface these conflicts.

✔ See yourself as a consultant

You’re there to help the organization learn about itself—as well as learn about customers. In addition to collecting information on what your stakeholders already want, think, and believe, you can also be absolutely clear you intend to analyze the customer data against these assumptions. Frame this as alignment and risk mitigation work.

One research consultant I know asks potential clients to consider the question, “What is your threshold for contradiction?” If they just want to confirm what they already believe, she walks. Although this might not always be possible, especially for an in-house researcher, even just asking the question gives stakeholders a heads up and gets them thinking about alternative possibilities.

Lastly, strengthen your ability to be heard—even when the messages go against the grain and are tough to receive—by building coalitions of support with your stakeholders who show signs of openness to mindset shifts.

Parting thoughts

Researchers have had a tough time in this contracted business environment, but we can advocate for the criticality of our role. We do this by broadening our own approach and others’ perceptions of “impact.”

Single-loop research learning is transactional and, often, extractive. Double loop learning, where customer voices and business assumptions are in a dynamic dialogue, considers the holistic system and cause-and-effect consequences of an organization’s decisions.

Let’s emphasize our ability to bring forward the full value of customer insights to help mitigate the risk of faulty assumptions, increase the ability to align with what’s true for customers, and learn our way into a constantly shifting, uncertain future.

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