# Complaints and Organizational Learning By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2022-10-05 Planning is a human behavior that we often think is lacking. While animals and other things in the natural world plan, it is pretty simple compared to what human organizations attempt to do. Bears eat a lot before they hibernate, and squirrels bury nuts for the winter. Humans manage supply chains where items come from hundreds of countries and thousands of miles away, draft and ratify treaties, and go to the moon. Humans have the upper hand in planning in the natural world. Yet, we often complain about how bad a plan is around the water cooler or group message chain. Part of our issue with planning is to highlight our shortcomings. This is why people talk about our cognitive biases. Awareness is the first step to getting better. So, we complain about our planning shortcomings to continuously improve. It appears that the human species is wired in this respect. We are constantly striving to learn, and learning requires a bit of trial and error. This is largely the foundation of science. When we try something, we lament the errors and celebrate the successes. Thus, we reinforce good outcomes to repeat them and really reinforce bad outcomes to avoid them at all costs. Bad outcomes often stick with us much longer than good ones. Much is known about how individuals learn, but I often wonder how an organization learns. Is complaining about planning and management part of the organizational learning process? If we touch a hot stove, our nerves signal the damage to our brain so we remove our hand and make sure we don't do that again. Are employee complaints about poor plans or management that same thing, but at the organizational scale? If so, this might explain why most organizations never make it past childhood because the primary management culture of today is to ignore or dismiss complaints. Effectively, they keep the hand on the stove because human organizations are not collectively a single entity or think of themselves that way. People within the organization can survive as individuals even if others do not. Essentially, who needs tens fingers anyways? Individual survival instincts will always win out over organizational needs. [[Learning organizations]] are rare today. It might be due to how we think about and manage complaints, or perhaps learning is an individual sport. #### Related Items [[Management]] [[Learning]] [[Organizational Analytics]] [[Business]]