Action Learning

Citation

Mumford, A. (1999), "Action Learning", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 31 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.1999.03731aad.003

Action Learning

Action LearningD.L. Dotlich and J.L. NoelJossey Bass1998£17.00 via Business Books

Keywords Action learning, Business schools, Management, Training

Until recently, action learning has been far more popular in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia than in the USA. Apparently there, the domination of the business schools and formal management training centres gave even less room than in the originating countries for the development of action learning.

The early work of Nancy Dixon, Victoria Marsick and Mike Marquardt, and more lately by Lex Dillworth, has now been followed by these two authors, whose experience is initially centred on the USA, although it usefully embraces multicultural experiences as well.

While a multicultural perspective is entirely desirable, and there is a need for organizations to take a genuinely global view which does not purely represent thinking in US terms, the expression of this in terms of the authors' "recommended readings" is rather odd.

Seven references to action learning books from the UK are partnered by only one reference to a US author (Marquardt). Noel Tichy, identified by one of the authors as the person who introduced action learning to General Electric, is not identified in the reading. (His semi-biography of Jack Welch of General Electric provides some useful background.) Whereas Marquardt and the other US authors identified above would acknowledge action learning as the brainchild of Revans, there is no reference to him in this work.

One virtue of this provenance for at least some readers may be that they will not have to read again Revans' equation (L = P + Q) or about "fellows in adversity", or "there is no learning without action and no (sober and deliberate) action without learning". However, only the last of these three is really recognized and addressed in the book, so perhaps for some readers it would have been improved by a reference to these ideas of Revans.

For example, the Revans equation (and the Mumford variant: Q + P + Q = L) distinguishes between P (programme knowledge) and Q (questioning insight).

The authors seem to me to have got into a conceptual muddle by not recognizing and using this distinction. They say action learning is not better than, but different from, other methods of executive development. They proceed to give strong emphasis to the weaknesses of the other forms of development. Yet on their programmes they make significant use of methods that they have panned, for example, outdoor experience, the use of gurus, or team-building exercises and various forms of structured feedback. There is certainly a case to be made for these and other ways of supporting action learning.

What is disturbing in this book is the absence of a proper recognition of the extent to which these are significantly different methods, perhaps justifiable within a programme, but not to be confused ­ as these authors do ­ with the action learning process itself.

Indeed, a serious questioner might ask why, if action learning is such a powerful process for creating effective work in groups and teams, it needs to be introduced through outdoor experiences ­ which the authors themselves say presents significant transfer problems for some people.

All of this is significant because of what it says and does not say about the nature of the learning process through which participants are going. There is a much to be welcomed reiteration, at several points, of the necessity for reflection, although there is very little on how this is actually achieved except in a big bang session at the end of the programme. The exciting heading in their 12 elements of action learning, "The Learning Process", unfortunately does not describe the learning process at all, but the sequence of events in their programmes.

There are other disappointments in view of the experience the authors claim of working on action learning with thousands of managers. I could find no exception to a general feature of all the projects, that they were what I describe as consultancy projects, in which recommendations are made to someone else, rather than implementation projects, in which the participants carry through their direct accountability. Since this issue is at the heart of the most beneficial forms of action learning (although admittedly not necessarily always achievable), it is surprising that it has not apparently come up for the authors.

There are some interesting anecdotes about cultural misunderstandings and conflicts in groups, but no other significant references to what happens in groups. On some of their programmes a person they describe as a "coach" has a major role ­ on other programmes there is no such intervention. There are no comments on why this happens. While explicitly dismissing the value of the "company hero" as a source of development (except presumably in the case of Jack Welch), the authors give great though proper emphasis to the role of the sponsor for an action learning programme. There are, however, no references to the roles of clients for the projects.

A lot of quite interesting material is presented on the kind of leaders needed in the new industrial society, with lists of skills and traits. The assertion is made that action learning is particularly suited to developing these ­ but there are no illustrations of this being achieved with individuals, just assertions about the fact of changes in behaviour in, for example, Citibank and General Electric.

I approached this book with an eager interest in action learning achievements in the USA. As will be seen from the comments above, I finished it with a considerable list of disappointments. The best features are the particular illustrations of how action learning programmes (in their understanding of the term) were generated. Here there are some useful thoughts for people trying to persuade chief executives to be interested.

Alan Mumford