🎯 Triple-Loop Learning — Single • Double • Triple

Moves from improving tasks to reshaping thinking and decision-making.

  • Single-loop: “Are we doing things right?” — tweak actions.
  • Double-loop: “Are we doing the right things?” — challenge assumptions.
  • Triple-loop: “How do we decide what’s right?” — examine values, power, and how ‘success’ is defined; sometimes implies changing the rules.

three steps showing triple loop learning

Use when: work involves policy, systems, and values (e.g., service design, governance, equity).

Source: For single/double-loop see Argyris & Schön’s organisational learning tradition; for triple-loop, see Tosey, Visser & Saunders (2012) review.