Action learning

According to Confucius, i hear and i forget ; i see and i remember ; i do and i understand.

Action learning is an educational process whereby the participant studies their own actions and experience in order to improve performance. Learners acquire knowledge through actual actions and repetitions, rather than through traditional instruction.

Action learning is done in conjunction with others, in small groups called action learning sets. It is proposed as particularly suitable for adults, as it enables each person to reflect on and review the action they have taken and the learning points arising. This should then guide future action and improve performance.

Revans's Formula

Professor Reginald Revans is the originator of action learning. He had invented and developed this method in the United Kingdom in the 1940s, working in the Coal Board. he encouraged managers to meet together in small groups, to share their experiences and ask each other questions about what they saw and heard. The approach increased productivity by over 30%. Later in hospitals, he concluded that the conventional instructional methods were largely ineffective.

People had to be aware of their lack of relevant knowledge and be prepared to explore the area of their ignorance with suitable questions and help from other people in similar positions.

This conclusion brought him into head-on conflict with educational institutions using lectures.

Later, Revans made this more precise in the opening chapter of his book (Revans, 1980) which describes the formula:

$L=P+Q$

where L is learning, P is programming (or programmed knowledge with simulations) and Q is questioning to create insight into what people see, hear or feel.

Q uses :

• "closed" questions:
  • who?
  • what?
• "objective" questions:
  • how much or how many?
• "relative" questions:
  • where
  • when
• "open questions
  • why?
  • how?

Although Q is the cornerstone of the method, the more relaxed formulation has enabled action learning to become widely accepted in many countries all over the world. In Revans' book there are examples from the USA, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

Michael Marquardt (2004; Marquardt, Leonard, Freedman, & Hill, 2009) expanded Revans's formula as follows:

L = P + Q + R, where R refers to Reflection.

This additional element emphasizes the point that "great questions" should evoke thoughtful Reflections while considering the current problem, the desired goal, designing strategies, developing action or implementation plans, or executing action steps that are components of the implementation plan.

Nobel Prize winners

Knowledge is got by experience, all the rest is information.(Einstein)

Revans noted from his experience working with Nobel prize winning scientists at University of Cambridge, that there was a distinction between cleverness (i.e. knowledge) and wisdom, which showed in the form of insightful questioning. He showed that much powerful learning comes from people learning 'with and from others', hence many action learning programmes put the 'action learning set' at the heart of the process.

Use in schools

The contribution of Revans is being seen today through initiatives in leadership development such as those made by Richard Hale working with major organisations. They have developed a new approach to education of leaders which is recognised by leading universities interested in work based learning in the UK. This puts the business or personal questions issues before the syllabus, so following Revans' principles 'theory follows the action'. Richard Hale spent his early career in the GEC organisation where Revans' ideas were pursued by Arnold Weinstock. Revans distinguished between puzzles and problems, noting that action learning lent itself to working on real problems (e.g. improving productivity or morale rather than puzzles e.g. constructing a balance sheet). Key writers on the subject have been Mike Pedler and Alan Mumford in the United Kingdom, Canada and internationally, and Robert Kramer, Michael Marquardt, and Joe Raelin in the United States.

ARL and MiL Models

As with other educational processes, practitioners have built on Revan’s pioneering work and have adapted some tenets to accommodate their needs. One such branch of action learning is Action Reflection Learning (ARL), which originated in Sweden among educators and consultants under the guidance of Lennart Rohlin of the MiL Institute in the 1970s. With the so-called “MiL model”, ARL gained momentum with the work of LIM, Leadership in International Management, under the leadership of Ernie Turner in the USA.

The main differences between Revans’ approach to action learning and the ‘MiL Model’ in the ‘80s are :

1. the role of a project team advisor (later called Learning Coach), which Revans advised against;
2. the use of team projects rather than individual challenges;
3. the duration of the sessions, which is more flexible in ARL designs.

The MiL Model evolved organically as practitioners responded to diverse needs and restrictions. In an experiential learning[mode, MiL practitioners varied the number and duration of the sessions, the type of project selected, the role of the Learning Coach and the style of his/her interventions.

ARL evolved organically through the choices and savvy intuitions of practitioners, who informally exchanged their experiences with each other. It became a somewhat shared practice, which incorporated elements of design and intervention that the practitioners adopted because of their efficacy. In 2004, Isabel Rimanoczy researched and coded the ARL methodology, identifying 16 elements and 10 underlying principles.

"Unlearning" as a Prerequisite for the "Learning" in Action Learning

Robert Kramer (2007a, 2007b, 2008, 2010) pioneered the use of action learning for officials in the U.S. government, and at the European Commission in Brussels and Luxembourg. He also introduced action learning to scientists at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen and to officials of the Estonian government at the State Chancellery (Prime Minister's Office) in Tallinn, Estonia.

Unlike other writers in the field of action learning, Kramer applies the theory of art, creativity and "unlearning" of the psychologist Otto Rank to his practice of action learning. Rank was the first to see therapy as a learning and unlearning experience. The therapeutic relationship allows the patient to: (1) learn more creative ways of thinking, feeling and being in the here-and-now; and (2) unlearn self-destructive ways of thinking, feeling and being in the here-and-now. Patterns of self-destruction ("neurosis") represent a failure of creativity not, as Freud assumed, a retreat from sexuality.

In action learning. questions allow group members to “step out of the frame of the prevailing ideology,” as Otto Rank wrote in Art and Artist (1932/1989, p. 70), reflect on their assumptions and beliefs, and reframe their choices. The process of “stepping out” of a frame, out of a form of knowing – a prevailing ideology – is analogous to the work of artists as they struggle to give birth to fresh ways of seeing the world, perspectives that allow them to see aspects of the world that no artists, including themselves, have ever seen before.

The most creative artists, such as Rembrandt, Michelangelo and Leonardo, know how to separate even from their own greatest public successes, from earlier artistic incarnations of themselves. Their “greatness consists precisely in this reaching out beyond themselves, beyond the ideology which they have themselves fostered,” according to Art and Artist (Rank, 1932/1989, p. 368). Through the lens of Otto Rank’s work on understanding art and artists, action learning can be seen as the never-completed process of learning how to “step out of the frame” of the ruling mindset, whether one’s own or the culture’s – in other words, of learning how to unlearn.

Comparing the process of unlearning to the “breaking out” process of birth, Otto Rank was the first psychologist to suggest that a continual capacity to separate from “internal mental objects” – from internalized institutions, beliefs and assumptions; from the restrictions of culture, social conformity and received wisdom – is the sine qua non for life-long creativity.

Unlearning necessarily involves separation from one’s self concept, as it has been culturally conditioned to conform to familial, group, occupational or organizational allegiances. According to Rank (1932/1989), unlearning or breaking out of our shell from the inside is “a separation [that] is so hard, not only because it involves persons and ideas that one reveres, but because the victory is always, at bottom, and in some form, won over a part of one’s ego” (p. 375).

In the organizational context, learning how to unlearn is vital because what we assume to be true has merged into our identity. We refer to the identity of an individual as a “mindset.” We refer to the identity of an organizational group as a “culture.” Action learners learn how to question, probe and separate from, both kinds of identity—i.e., their “individual” selves and their “social” selves. By opening themselves to critical inquiry, they begin to learn how to emancipate themselves from what they "know" – they learn how to unlearn.

Role of AL Coach and Questions

An ongoing challenge of action learning has been producing desired organizational results and meeting organizational expectations by taking action and learning in an action learning project. Usually the urgency of the problem or task decreases or eliminates the reflective time necessary for learning. More and more organizations have recognized the critical importance of an action learning coach in the process, someone who has the authority and responsibility of creating time and space for the group to learn at the individual, group and organizational level. There is controversy relative to the need for an action learning coach. Reg Revans was against the use of learning coaches and, in general, of interventionist facilitators and "certified"coaches" . He believed the action learning set or group could practice action learning on its own. Neither did he want a group to become dependent on a coach. Moreover, reflection was always a fundamental component of action learning for him and did not, therefore, have to be emphasized as some consultancies have done.

Self-managed action learning (Bourner et al., 2002; O'Hara et al., 2004) is a variant of action learning that dispenses with the need for a facilitator of the action learning set. Shurville and Rospigliosi (2009) have explored taking self-managed action learning online to create virtual self managed action learning. Deborah Waddill has developed guidelines for virtual action learning teams, what she calls action e-learning.

To increase the reflective, learning aspect of action learning, many groups now adopt the practice or norm of focusing on questions rather than statements while working on the problem and developing strategies and actions. Questions also enable the group to listen, to more quickly become a cohesive team, and to generate creative, out-of-the-box thinking.

The difficulty with relating Self-managing teams (e.g., Wellins, Byham, & Wilson, 1991) to action learning is that the former focus almost exclusively on finding or creating solutions for the problems with which they are tasked. Without reflection, action learning team members are likely to import their organizational or sub-unit cultural norms and familiar problem solving practices into their teams without making them explicit or testing their validity and utility. Cultural norms and practices inform action learning team members’ implicit assumptions, mental models, and beliefs about what methods or processes should be applied to solve a problem. Thus, not always but with great regularity, they apply traditional problem solving methods to non-traditional, urgent, critical, and discontinuous problems while mindlessly expecting them to produce viable, effective solutions—generally without enduring positive effect.

Without action learning team coaches who focus exclusively on helping team members to inquire, reflect, and learn from their emerging experiences while explicitly refraining from any involvement in the contents of the problem, team members often "leap" from the initial problem statement to some form of brainstorming that they assume will reveal or produce a viable solution. These suggested solutions typically provoke objections, doubts, concerns, or reservations from other team members who advocate their own preferred solutions. The conflicts that ensue are generally both unproductive and time-consuming. Self-managed teams, tend to split or fragment rather than develop and evolve into a cohesive, high-performing team.

Perhaps most important, without coaches who have the authority to intervene whenever they perceive a learning opportunity, there is no assurance that the team will make the time needed for periodic, systemic, and strategic inquiry and reflection (Marquardt, 2004; Marquardt, Leonard, Freedman, & Hill, 2009). Thus, self-managed versions of action learning teams are unlikely to enable team members to make explicit efforts to learn – about themselves, leadership, teamwork, participative problem solving, the systemic nature of problems, the relationships between the problem and the organization’s strategic direction, interactions of organizational subsystems, and organizational dynamics, including organizational politics.

Events and Conferences

Several organizations focusing on the implementation and improvement of Action Learning sponsor conferences. Examples are the International Foundation for Action Learning, the Global Forum on Executive Development and Business Driven Action Learning, and the Action Learning/Action Research Association.

Bibliography

• Bourner, T., O’Hara, S. &Webber, T. 2002. Learning to manage change in the Health Service, in: A. Brockbank, I.
• Crainer, Stuart. 1999. The 75 Greatest Management Decisions Ever Made. New York: AMACOM Publishing
• Dilworth, R. L., and Willis, V. 2003. Action Learning: Images and Pathways.
• Chambers, A. and Hale, R. 2007. Keep Walking: Leadership Learning in Action, RHA Publications, UK.
• Hale, R.I., To Match or Mis-match? The dynamics of mentoring as a route to personal and organisational learning, Career Development International, 5/4/5, 2000, pp 223-234
• Hale, R.I., Adding Real Value With Work Based Learning Questions, Training Journal, 2004, July, pp. 34-39.
• Hale, R.I., How Training Can Add More Value to the Business, part 1, Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 35, No. 1, 2003, pp. 29-32.
• Hale, R.I., How Training Can Add More Value to the Business, part 2, Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 35, No. 2, 2003, pp. 49-52.
• Kramer, R. and Kelly, J. 2010. Transformative Action Learning in the U.S. Government. A chapter in Yuri Boshyk and Robert Dilworth (eds.), Action Learning and Its Applications. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-54.
• Kramer, R. 2008. Learning How to Learn: Action Learning for Leadership Development. A chapter in Rick Morse (Ed.) Innovations in Public Leadership Development. Washington DC: M.E. Sharpe and National Academy of Public Administration, pp. 296–326.
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• Martinsons, M.G. 1998. MBA action learning projects. Hong Kong University Press.
• O'Hara, S., Bourner, T. and Webber, T. 2004. Practice of self managed action learning. Action learning: research and practice,1(1): 29-42.
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• Pedler, M., (Ed.). 1991. Action learning in practice (2nd ed.). Aldershot,UK: Gower.
• Pedler, M. 1996. Action learning for managers. London: Lemos and Crane.
• Raelin, J. A. 1997. Action learning and action science: Are they different? Organizational Dynamics, 26(1): 21–34.
• Raelin, J. A. 2000. Work-based learning: The new frontier of management development. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
• Rank, O. 1932/1989. Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development. W.W. Norton.
• Revans, R. 1980. Action learning: New techniques for management. London: Blond & Briggs, Ltd.
• Revans, R. W. 1982. The origin and growth of action learning.Brickley, UK: Chartwell-Bratt.
• Revans, R. W. 1998. ABC of action learning. London: Lemos and Crane.
• Rimanoczy, I., and Turner, E. 2008. Action Reflection Learning: solving real business problems by connecting learning with earning. US, Davies-Black Publishing.
• Rohlin, L., Turner, E. and others. 2002. Earning while Learning in Global Leadership: the Volvo MiL Partnership. Sweden, MiL Publishers AB.
• Sawchuk, P. H. 2003. Adult learning and technology in working class life. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Shurville, S.J. and Rospigliosi, A. 2009. Implementing blended self-managed action learning for digital entrepreneurs in higher education. Action Learning: Research and Practice, Volume 6, Issue 1 March 2009 , pages 53 – 61.
• Wellins, R.S., Byham, W.C., & Wilson, J.M. (1991). Empowered teams: Creating self-directed work teams that improve quality, production, and participation, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

See also

• Action research
• Inquiry-based learning
• Action Science