Corporate America: A wicked learning environment

Organisational psychologists speak of two types of learning environments: kind and wicked.

The term "wicked learning environment" was coined by Robin Hogarth, and has been widely validated and adopted, to describe settings where learning - that magic that humans are designed to do - does not occur. It doesn't happen because the unpredictability, complexity and lack of consistently applied rules render those condemed to work in them incapable of forming knowledge patterns. They live in the chaos, constantly disorientated: it's like the first week on the job...for year after year.

In a "kind" environment, which we may have experienced at school, the rules are clear, the patterns are predictable, and feedback is immediate and reliable. What you experience today is largely what you'll experience tomorrow, and the challenges you face will be familiar and manageable, if graduallly increasing in difficulty. Like a game of chess, you may not 'win' every time and you cannot predict the decisions of other humans, but agreed definitions, roles and rules provide the structure we need to play.

But in a wicked learning environment, there’s a constant shift. The rules may not just change: they may not even exist. The patterns are erratic, feedback might be sparse, delayed or even misleading. Even if you think you know what's coming, next year’s work could look completely different from the work you’re doing today.

They call it fast-paced, they call it dynamic, they say it requires flexibility, they say it draws on your skills of coping with uncertainty, they blame the whole world: it's the rise of AI, it's increasing competition, it's the VUCA (volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous) world we all live in.

Only a lot of the time it's just bad leadership. And the rest: it's an intentional strategy to destabilise staff made by idiots who have't studied the research that shows: in wicked environments, performance drops.

The struggle to learn in a chaotic context leaves employees stuck in a cycle of confusion and stagnation, repeatedly circling, unsure of how to grow or develop in the face of constantly changing demands.

In environments like this, growth isn’t about mastering or applying skills, it’s about surviving in a space where the definition of "success" shifts like saltmarsh.

Who hasn't met a target only to have it increased? Who hasn't delivered their objectives then had those same set and agreed objectives questioned retrospectively? Such is the bucking bronco of corporate America (and it's spreading).