IVEntrepreneurshipGuide
Learning as an Owner: Books, Exchange, and Training Alongside Daily Work
Owners learn constantly, but mostly by chance: from the last mistake, the last conversation, the last article. How much of it reaches the business depends less on the amount than on whether the learning has a process.
Key takeaways
- Entrepreneurial learning is a distinct form of workplace learning. A study with 25 Dutch owners names four factors that promote it: guidance, exchange with the outside, conversations within the business, and the nature of the task.
- According to Argyris and Schön, there are two levels of learning: correcting errors in the existing approach or changing the assumptions behind it. Owners need both.
- What is learned fades without application. In a field experiment with 805 owners, personal initiative declined again after a training, much faster for some than for others.
- The learning plan combines three sources, reading, exchange, and targeted training, with a fixed date on which what was learned becomes a change in the business.
Why do owners learn so much and retain so little?
An owner reads a trade article in the evening, listens to a podcast on the drive, meets a colleague with a good idea at an association event, and attends a seminar once a year. Six months later, hardly anything has changed in the business. That is rarely due to a lack of interest. It is because no path has been built between what was learned and everyday work.
This piece asks: How does an owner learn alongside daily business in a way that what is learned reaches the business? To answer it, I first clarify what entrepreneurial learning is, then present a model with two levels of learning, summarize what studies show, weigh two views, and end with a learning plan that fits a full calendar.
What is entrepreneurial learning?
Lans, Biemans, Verstegen, and Mulder (2008) describe entrepreneurial learning as a distinct form of workplace learning. It arises from the tasks only the owner has: recognizing opportunities, setting direction, carrying responsibility. Unlike employees, the owner has no HR department planning training and no superior giving feedback. The learning is strongly outward-oriented and tied to personal risk.
Two further terms help with ordering. Formal learning takes place in organized formats such as courses, degree programs, or seminars. Informal learning happens along the way, through experience, conversations, and reading. Millsteed, Redmond, and Walker (2017) asked 26 self-employed occupational therapists in Australia how they had acquired the necessary business skills. Before starting their practice they learned mainly formally; afterward almost only informally.
The thinking model: learning on two levels
In 1978, the organizational researchers Chris Argyris and Donald Schön distinguished two levels of learning. In single-loop learning, an error is corrected without examining the underlying assumptions. In double-loop learning, the assumptions themselves are questioned: Are the goals right, the rules, the picture of the customer?
Argyris used an everyday image for this. A thermostat that turns on the heating as soon as it gets colder than 20 degrees Celsius learns in one loop: it detects a deviation and corrects it. A thermostat that could ask whether 20 degrees is the right temperature at all would learn in two loops.
| Single-loop learning | Double-loop learning | |
|---|---|---|
| Guiding question | Are we doing it right? | Are we doing the right thing? |
| Example: proposals | Send proposals faster | Ask whether the proposal format suits the customer |
| Example: staff | Add a checklist to onboarding | Check whether the position is defined correctly |
| Typical source | Errors, key figures, checklists | Exchange, outside view, crises |
| Risk if missing | Repeated errors | A wrong strategy executed well |
The distinction fits a finding of the study by Millsteed and colleagues (2017). Lower-level learning happened in everyday routines. Higher-level learning, which changed their self-understanding as owners, came about mainly through disruptive events. If you only wait for such events, you usually learn in two loops only during a crisis.
If you only learn from mistakes, you get better at what you already do. Whether you are doing the right thing, you will not find out that way.
What studies show about how owners learn
Lans and colleagues (2008) conducted in-depth interviews with 25 owners from Dutch greenhouse horticulture, an innovative and successful sector. They asked about critical incidents surrounding a business opportunity the owners had pursued. Four factors particularly promoted learning.
Support and guidance
People who advise, ask questions, and share experience, such as consultants, colleagues, or family members.
Exchange with the outside
Contact with customers, suppliers, research, and other businesses, from which new perspectives come.
Communication within the business
Conversations with employees in which ideas are tested and experiences are reported back.
Characteristics of the task
New, demanding tasks call for more learning than routine.
The authors also observed an interaction: the work environment influences the owner's learning, and the owner at the same time shapes this environment. So if you have little exchange, you can create it. A limitation applies: the sample is small and comes from one industry; the results describe patterns, not effects.
What is learned fades without application
That training can work is shown by a field experiment in Togo in which a personal initiative training raised small business owners' profits by 30 percent (Campos et al. 2017). The article Is there an entrepreneurial personality? describes it in detail. Just as important is what happens afterward. Mensmann and Frese (2017) followed 805 owners of small and medium-sized businesses after such a training. Personal initiative declined again over time. The decline was slower among owners who enjoy thinking problems through, which psychology calls need for cognition.
Source: Mensmann and Frese (2017); Lans et al. (2008); Millsteed et al. (2017)
Two views: course and book, or exchange and experience?
The first view relies on formal learning. Books, courses, and seminars bring knowledge you would never have gained from your own experience, and they force a certain thoroughness. The field experiment from Togo suggests that well-designed trainings have measurable effects. However, a traditional business training showed no significant effect there. So the type of format matters a great deal.
The second view relies on informal learning. According to the findings of Lans and Millsteed, owners learn mainly by doing and through conversation. Peer exchange groups, mentors, and customers provide knowledge that fits one's own business. Kelliher, Foley, and Frampton (2009) describe a learning network for small tourism businesses in Ireland that relied on learning through action, with local learning groups and joint events, and in which the businesses participated actively and extensively.
I consider the opposition less important than the question of transition. Formal learning provides impulses, informal learning tests them on one's own case, and both remain without consequence if nobody sets a date on which a thought becomes a change. The decline after training that Mensmann and Frese observed is exactly this problem.
Formal: book, course, seminar
- Brings knowledge from beyond one's own experience
- Thorough and orderly
- Effect depends heavily on the format
- Risk: knowledge without application
Informal: exchange, experience
- Fits one's own business
- Happens along the way
- Depends on good conversation partners
- Risk: only confirming the familiar
The learning plan: three sources and a fixed transition
The learning plan has a simple structure. It sets out which sources you learn from, how much time you reserve for it, and when you check what has reached the business. A worked example shows how much time that means per month.
Worked example: 14 hours a month, or a good three hours per week. The distribution is freely chosen.
Set the learning question
For the quarter, formulate one question your business really has, for example: How do we get proposals to the customer faster? All learning this quarter serves this question.
Read with notes
Read a specialist book or several articles on the learning question. After each chapter, write down in two sentences what you could try in the business.
Seek exchange
Talk to two or three owners or a mentor about the learning question. Do not ask for opinions; ask what they actually did and what went wrong.
Choose training deliberately
Book at most one format per quarter, and only if it answers the learning question. Check beforehand whether it includes exercises on your own case.
Monthly learning review
Take one hour: What have I learned? What of it will I implement, who is involved, by when? What has changed since last time?
There are various forms of exchange, from trade associations to small peer exchange groups. They differ greatly in effort and benefit. The comparison Business networks compared gives an overview, and the guide Networking with a plan shows how to maintain contacts deliberately. What a mentor can offer and how to find one is described in the article Mentoring for entrepreneurs.
How what you learn reaches the business
Lans and colleagues name communication within the business as one of the four learning factors. This also applies in the other direction: what the owner learns only arrives if they share it with the team and have it tested there. Four habits help.
- Share instead of decree: Present a new idea to the team as a trial, with a deadline and a criterion for measuring success.
- Ask double-loop questions: Once a quarter in the learning review, ask not only what went wrong but which assumption lay behind it.
- Review your own decisions: Record larger decisions with expectation and reasoning and later compare them with the result. The guide The decision journal shows how.
- Discuss mistakes together: A short debrief without assigning blame turns a mistake into a learning opportunity. The article Learning from bad decisions describes the procedure.
One limit should be stated openly: learning takes energy, and many owners are short of it. A learning plan that becomes an additional obligation misses its purpose. Better two fixed hours a week that are kept than five that are dropped after three weeks.
What you can do this week
- Write down the one question your business most urgently needs to answer this quarter.
- Choose a book or three articles on it and put two fixed reading times in your calendar.
- Name two owners you want to talk to about this question and arrange a conversation.
- Set the date for the first learning review four weeks from now.
Conclusion: how does an owner learn effectively alongside daily business?
The opening question was an owner learns alongside daily business in a way that reaches the business. The studies show that owners learn mainly by doing and through exchange, that guidance, outside contacts, conversations within the business, and demanding tasks promote this learning, and that what is learned fades without application. The model of Argyris and Schön adds that there are two levels and that the second, examining one's own assumptions, rarely happens by itself.
An owner therefore learns effectively not by reading more or attending more seminars, but through one learning question, several sources, and a fixed date on which what was learned becomes a change. Knowledge that never turns into a process remains a good intention.
Frequently asked questions
How can I keep learning as an entrepreneur alongside daily business?
Set a learning question for the quarter and align reading, exchange, and training with it. Plan fixed times, for example three hours a week. Check once a month what has been implemented in the business.
What is entrepreneurial learning?
According to Lans and colleagues, entrepreneurial learning is a distinct form of workplace learning. It arises from the owner's tasks, such as recognizing opportunities and carrying responsibility. It is strongly outward-oriented and mostly happens informally.
What is the difference between single-loop and double-loop learning?
In single-loop learning, an error is corrected without examining the assumptions. In double-loop learning, the assumptions themselves are questioned, that is, whether the goals and rules are right. The model comes from Chris Argyris and Donald Schön.
Are seminars worthwhile for business owners?
That depends heavily on the format. In a field experiment, a personal initiative training had a clear effect, while a traditional business training had no detectable one. What matters are exercises on your own case and a plan for applying what you learned afterward.
Which books should an entrepreneur read?
Instead of a fixed list, a learning question helps: read what answers your business's most urgent question. After each chapter, note what you want to try, and implement one idea per month.
Sources
- Lans, T.; Biemans, H.; Verstegen, J.; Mulder, M. (2008): The Influence of the Work Environment on Entrepreneurial Learning of Small-business Owners. Management Learning, 39(5), 597-613.
- Millsteed, J.; Redmond, J.; Walker, E. (2017): Learning management by self-employed occupational therapists in private practice. Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, 64(2), 113-120.
- Mensmann, M.; Frese, M. (2017): Keep on Changing: The Role of Need for Cognition for Post-Training Maintenance of Entrepreneurial Proactivity. Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, 37, 136-141.
- Campos, F.; Frese, M.; Goldstein, M. et al. (2017): Teaching personal initiative beats traditional training in boosting small business in West Africa. Science, 357(6357), 1287-1290.
- Kelliher, F.; Foley, A.; Frampton, A.-M. (2009): Facilitating small firm learning networks in the Irish tourism sector. Tourism & Hospitality Research, 9(1), 80-95.
- Argyris, C.; Schön, D. A. (1978): Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Addison-Wesley.
