Double Loop Learning for Surviving & Thriving

Last updated: August 26, 2026

When the ground shifts under a business or an industry, assumptions we made about how things work get upended fast. Typically, when we receive feedback on our actions, we make a course correction and carry on. But in genuinely disruptive times, a course correction isn't enough. We need to challenge the assumptions themselves, and that is what double-loop learning gives us.

 What is Double Loop Learning?

Argyris & Schon (1974) proposed a double-loop learning theory that promotes learning to change underlying values and assumptions. The following diagram explains it:

In single-loop learning, we receive feedback from our actions and adjust our behavior accordingly. In double-loop learning, we take a ‘step back’ and challenge our assumptions, beliefs, and values about why we behaved that way in the first place. Double loop learning is really ‘disruptive thinking’. 

Double Loop Learning Strategy

As with any learning strategy, using the double loop requires asking questions. Some examples would be:

• What am I trying to do?
• What is stopping me from doing it?
• What can I do about it?
• Who knows what I am trying to do?
• Who else can do anything to help?

Coaching Questions

Often, it is difficult to step back from the single loop and get to your assumptions. This is where having a coach or a trusted friend can help. Get them to ask you:

• What is important to you?
• What are you assuming?
• How do you feel about what is going on?
• What questions does that raise?
• How would someone you most admire deal with this situation?
• Can you think of three options for action?
• What are the pros and cons of each of these options?
• What first steps are you going to take?

Double Loop Learning and Self-leadership

With a self-leadership approach to learning we influence our thinking feeling and actions toward our objectives. The self-leader reflects, acts intentionally, and then reflects on the results. When the results are unexpected, double-loop learning helps the self-leader to question the assumptions that they held about the situation.

This is exactly the mechanism behind self-learning, one of the three core competencies of self-leadership, alongside self-awareness and self-regulation. Self-awareness tells you what you're doing. Self-regulation helps you manage the doing. But self-learning is what stops you from doing the same thing, slightly differently, forever. It's the difference between adjusting your grip and questioning whether you're even holding the right tool.

Double Loop Learning as the Engine of "Evaluate" in IGNITE

In my IGNITE Framework, from my book POTENTIAL-IZE, the final letter, E, stands for Evaluate. Most leaders treat evaluation as a scorecard exercise: did the number go up or down, did the initiative land or not. That is single-loop thinking wearing an evaluation costume.

Real evaluation, the kind that actually changes trajectory, is double-loop learning by another name. It asks not just "did this work" but "was the thinking behind this ever sound." A leader who evaluates a failed product launch by tweaking the marketing budget is still in the single loop. A leader who evaluates the same launch by asking whether the underlying assumption about the customer was wrong has stepped into the double loop, and that is where Evaluate actually lives.

In any period of genuine disruption, we get an unwelcome but valuable pause to reflect on our assumptions.

• What have we been assuming about our business? 
• What have we been assuming about our leadership?
• What have we been assuming about our industry?
• What have we been assuming about our own responsibility in all of this?

Henry Ford once quipped,

“Thinking is the hardest work we do which is why so few people do any of it”

As a self-leadership coach and leadership speaker, I am fortunate that I get to ask questions of some very smart people. The best conversations happen when we challenge the big assumptions together, not when we simply tighten the existing plan. It is my deepest hope that leaders come out of a genuine crisis with ‘eyes wide open’, recognizing which of their basic assumptions about how they lead, and how they treat their people, actually need rethinking.