Action Learning

I first came across explanations of learning by doing when I was involved with Action Learning courses for some of my team. Each delegate took a problem he or she were trying to solve and told the other delegates. Then what? The delegates sat around until one of them realised that they needed to take the initiative and do something; at this stage the course tutor would assist them!

Action Learning is the brainchild of Prof. Reg Revans who introduced the concept over 50 years ago.

In brief: Action Learning is learning from concrete experience and critically reflecting on that experience through group discussion, trial and error, discovery and learning from and with each other.

Building on this experience my team discovered Peter Senge's work on learning organisations and used the model in his book The 5th Discipline , Senge develops the learning model shown here:

More in a while..

Comments

[thebizofknowledge]

Interesting. What we know, we still know, but we need to look at it with new eyes in light of changing technology, consumer needs, etc. There are a variety of concepts about how to do this which I find fascinating.

[JIm Rait]

Thanks for reading! Have you documented these "how" concepts. One challenge I have found facilitating teams is the "Waiting for Godot" Samuel Becket) effect:
'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful.'
Teams that ask, say, a supplier to provide a solution to an ill-defined problem. 6 weeks down the (time)line they will find the solution doesn't work; an afternoon's rapid experimentation will reveal the same conclusion! So how do you persuade them to act.... to quote Becket again:
No matter; try again; fail again, fail better.