Skilled Unawareness and Skilled Incompetence
by Chris Argyris
[in his book 'Flawed Advice and the Management Trap, p 6, 240,88-90]
We are skillful when we no longer have to be aware of everything we learned that led to our being skilled. Thus
the prime evidence of acting skillfully is a kind of designed ignorance that I call "skilled unawareness". But this
type of skillful behaviour regularly leads to counterproductive outcomes that are unmistakable signs of
incompetence, it follows that Model I causes not only skilled unawareness but also skilled incompetence.
Often we know that individuals are systematically unaware of the gaps as they produce them. If they are aware,
they hold factors outside of themselves to be responsible for the gaps and inconsistencies.
A case here to illustrate skilled unawareness. Chris Argyris, the interventionist with a group of HR professionals:
HR: As I think about it, the most common situation that we deal with is a sense, at the gut level, that
people are not authentic.
HR: Yes, people say they want to change. However they do not act consistently.
[Interventionist: How would you deal with that?]
HR: I would ask questions so that it appears that their actions aren't consistent with the commitments
they made. Are you in agreement with my views or aren't you?
HR: If I see them not acting in accordance with their agreements, then I would say that sends a signal to
me that they really do not agree. I can then ask, 'Why did you say you agree in the first place?'
Others added that the line managers would respond to such inquiries by saying that the "whole political
structure" required them to agree even when they did not. That is how they survive. But if so, why did
the HR experts not explore the inconsistencies embedded in this framing of the problem? Indeed, if line
managers felt coerced by organizational defensive routines such as "politics", they why weren't these
issues discussed as part of the program for getting "buying-in"? One possibility, of course, was that the
HR experts were also being influenced by the same organizational defenses:
HR: It's back to the issue of internal commitment. I cannot see that it is always in people's interest to be
authentic.
[Interventionist: Is it not fair for me to say that nowhere in the design of these programmes do you
advise the change professionals and the line managers to discuss this possibility? As I read the
specifications, the assumption is that authenticity is always a good idea. Am I correct?]
HR: I think it is fair to say that we believe that the overall effectiveness of our business is enhanced when
people, particularly those doing the leading, act authentically. But, I believe in the real world, it is not
always in a persons' best interest to be authentic. This is a huge conflict for me.
[Interventionist: Maybe line managers feel the same conflict. Maybe they infer that you do not see
that you have the same conflict.]
HR: I am beginning to see that we - no, I - do not walk my talk and that I do not know how to do so.
[Interventionist: Is it fair to say that you were unaware of these gaps until now?]
HR: As I think about it, I would say that sometimes, I was aware of the gaps, but it was when others
produced them. I was not aware when I was producing them.
This is, of course, a far cry from the assertion, made at the outset of the meeting, that the responsibility for
failures primarily belonged to line managers. The usual counterproductive cycle did not get into high gear
because I role played the line manager as being eager to help HR experts become aware of their skilled
incompetence and skilled unawareness as well as their lack of a valid and actionable theory on which to base their
programmes. Nor did I push them hard on the disjunction between their espoused theory and their
theory-in-use on employee commitment. Real in-company discussions would not have been so delicate.