The Stairway To Nowhere

The Stairway To Nowhere

M.C. Escher's Ascending and Descending depicts people endlessly walking a staircase.

Some are climbing.

Others are descending.

Step after step.

Around and around.

Except nobody is actually getting anywhere.

The image is based on the Penrose stairs—an impossible staircase where every flight appears to ascend or descend, yet eventually returns you to exactly where you started.

Everyone is moving.

Everyone appears to be making progress.

But nobody is gaining elevation.

Organizations can do this too.

Repetition isn't improvement

Organizations make thousands of decisions.

They launch products. Change prices. Hire people. Enter markets. Run experiments. Allocate capital. Change strategies.

They review results. Build dashboards. Conduct postmortems. Bring in consultants.

Then they make another decision.

And another.

There's certainly no shortage of activity.

But are they actually getting any better at deciding?

Because repetition isn't improvement.

I learned something about that years ago on the track.

There was showing up for practice and doing the workout the coach had written for the day.

And then there was training.

They weren't necessarily the same thing.

Two athletes could complete exactly the same workout—the same intervals, the same repetitions, the same recovery—and get something very different from it.

You could simply finish what was written on the page.

Or you could approach each element of the workout with a specific intent.

What is this interval supposed to develop?

What should I be paying attention to?

Where is my form beginning to break down?

Am I learning to maintain pace when I'm tired?

What needs to be different on the next repetition?

The workout itself created the opportunity to improve.

Intentional practice created the improvement.

I think organizations work much the same way.

Experience isn't necessarily learning

An organization can make essentially the same decision dozens of times without ever improving how it makes that decision.

A team can run experiment after experiment without getting better at experimentation.

An executive can accumulate years of experience while repeatedly relying on the same assumptions and habits.

We've been around the staircase many times.

That doesn't mean we've climbed.

What creates the elevation is what happens between decisions.

Did we preserve what we expected to happen?

Did we compare that with what actually happened?

Did we examine where our reasoning held—and where it didn't?

Did we discover something we needed to unlearn?

Did anything actually change because of what we learned?

And most importantly:

Did that learning make its way into the next decision?

The next decision is the test

I've come to think there's a relatively simple test for organizational learning:

Is the organization better prepared to make the next decision because it made this one?

Maybe an assumption that was invisible is now visible.

Maybe we know which evidence matters.

Maybe we've discovered a risk we weren't considering.

Maybe we've stopped relying on a metric that wasn't telling us what we thought it was.

Maybe we're simply asking a better question.

Whatever changed, the next decision begins from a different place.

That's learning.

And when that learning consistently changes how future decisions are made, it becomes capability.

From circles to spirals

Good decision-making is repetitive.

Frame the question.

Examine the evidence.

Make assumptions explicit.

Establish expectations.

Make the decision.

Observe what happens.

Scrutinize the outcome.

Preserve what was learned.

Then do it again.

That sounds like a circle.

But it shouldn't be.

We should return to the same disciplines without returning to the same place.

The circle should become an upward spiral.

Each time around, we should gain a little elevation.

Better questions.

Better evidence.

Better judgment.

Better awareness of what we don't know.

That's how experience becomes learning.

And how learning, practiced deliberately and consistently, becomes Decision Capability.

Are you climbing?

That's what makes Escher's staircase so unsettling.

The people on it appear to be climbing.

That's the danger.

Activity can look like progress.

More data can look like better evidence.

More sophisticated analytics can look like better thinking.

More experiments can look like more learning.

And more experience can look like greater capability.

None necessarily is.

The test is simpler:

Are we better prepared to make the next decision because we made this one?

If yes, we've gained elevation.

If not, we may simply have completed another lap on the stairway to nowhere.

Reflection

Think about an important decision your organization makes repeatedly.

After all the times you've made it, what are you genuinely better at today?

And what will you intentionally practice the next time around?

Experience can take you in circles.

Learning should be the stairway to somewhere.