Optimizing the Power of Action Learning

Action Learning Basics

An intellectual innovator named Reg Revan's first applied the principles of action learning in the Welsh coalfields in the 1940s. Action learning involves assigning a group to solve a real problem, making it clear that their future depends on how well they solve it. Coaches assist the team but do not engage in solving the problem. Action learning is suited to fast-paced organizations which face daunting challenges without the luxury of first learning how to solve a problem and then implementing the solution. Instead, they have to learn, act, solve and implement at the same time. This kind of rapid action learning has six components:

1. The problem – The action learning team is responsible for grappling with and solving one or more important actual problems.
2. The action learning group – This team of four to eight diverse members wrestles with a problem whose solution is not obvious but whose consequences or implications are damaging the organization.
3. Questioning and listening – Action learning assumes that asking the right questions will lead to the right answers, so it stresses questioning and reflecting on answers. Questions help the group develop communication and cohesion.
4. Action – Group members must be able to take action or must receive assurances from those with authority that their recommended actions will be implemented.
5. Commitment to learning – Action learning is about both action and learning. The learning is even more valuable to the organization than the solution to the problem.
6. The coach – The coach poses questions and guides the team's reflections. The coach's questions help the team monitor and improve its group performance, and help individual members improve their listening, communication and thinking skills.

Component One: The Problem

Action learning requires a problem to address. Much depends on selecting the right problem. Problems must be important challenges, with a lot at stake and within the sphere of the team members' responsibility. Select an actual – not hypothetical – problem with no existing or easily identified solution. Typical action learning problems might be how to create a new service business, how to keep new staff, how to build market share or how to manage risk.

Component Two: The Action Group

The composition of the action-learning group depends on commitment, knowledge, power, familiarity, diversity, the selection process and attendance. Ideally the group is six people, not many more or less. A diversity of members gives the group several perspectives, a variety that allows the group to break out of predetermined intellectual constructs and see things freshly. At least one member must have a real stake in solving the problem and one member should have the power to implement the group's decision. One member, or more, should be knowledgeable about the problem. However, do not overweight the group with subject experts because they tend to be too steeped in traditional ways of thinking about their topic. Their expertise may also give them disproportionate authority in the group.

Component Three: Questioning and Listening

Questions help group members understand, elucidate and take the discussion in new directions to find innovative solutions. Action learning spotlights the questions, not the solutions. Questions are more powerful than declarations and the quality of questions is, perhaps, the single most important element in action learning. Everyone, not just the coach, asks questions, and no one makes statements except in response to questions. Questions may be:

• Open – Giving members the widest possible latitude in possible responses.
• Affective – Asking members to express feelings.
• Reflective – Inviting someone to explain motives, reasons or assumptions behind a statement or opinion.
• Probing – Seeking more detail or greater depth on a topic.
• Fresh – Demanding a new and different perspective or challenging orthodox assumptions or opinions.
• Connecting – Linking ideas, events or issues not previously connected.
• Clarifying – Rephrasing or seeking to better define what someone has said.
• Explorative – Opening a new dimension on a problem, perhaps by asking, "Have you considered this resource?"
• Analytical – Asking why.
• Closed – Asking for a yes or no answer.

Components Four and Five: Action and Learning

Action learning is, of course, about action as well as learning. The problem the group addresses offers an occasion to learn, practice and develop skills at the individual, team and organizational levels. Solving problems and taking action unfold in four steps:

1. Understand the problem and reframe it – Often, the originally presented problem is a symptom, not an underlying cause. Addressing the symptom instead of the disease is not effective. The group reframes the problem to find the crucial underlying issue.
2. Identify the goal – Having reframed the problem, the group identifies a goal, perhaps not the one the problem's presenter originally envisioned. The goal should be "SMART," that is, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound.
3. Develop and test action strategies – Action strategies address what to do and how to do it. The action must be appropriate and achievable in the relevant time period. For instance, a strategy to change the corporate culture behind customer service in three weeks is not realistic or achievable. At this stage, groups members sometimes prefer to think in anecdotes and talk about past experiences. Action learning seeks to move from anecdotal to analytical thinking. Group members also tend to focus on programmed knowledge or assumptions formed by their experiences. Action-learning groups seek to break the constraints of programmed learning and make it possible for members to think and learn in new ways.
4. Action and reflection – At the conclusion of each session, the group agrees on some specific, measurable action and records the decision. At the beginning of the next session, they refer to and review the action, asking what was learned from pursuing it.

Component Six: The Coach

The coach's unique role distinguishes action learning from other learning styles. The coach facilitates the group process and is a team builder and motivator. While the team focuses on the problem, the coach focuses on how the group works. One coach can serve for the group's duration, or the coaching job can rotate among group members. Each option has pros and cons. Using members may save money and help members build coaching skills. Using an outsider, often a consultant, ensures having a qualified coach and allows team members to direct all their energy, all the time, toward solving the assigned, urgent, high stakes problem.

Addressing Problems with Action Learning

Single-problem action learning groups try to solve one problem. The organization identifies the problem and appoints group members. After the problem is solved, the group may disband, or the organization may send it more problems to address. The choice of who to appoint to a single-problem group depends on the problem at hand. Groups that aim to solve leadership problems will include leaders, and so on. By contrast, in multiple-problem groups, each member brings a problem, task or project to the group to seek the help of other members. The organization does not determine the group's membership. Each self-selected member receives an allocation of time during which the group will address his or her problem. For instance, a six-person group meeting for three hours typically would spend a half an hour on each member's problem, task or project.

Rules and Chaos

Without direction and ground rules, any group may deviate and begin to wander aimlessly. However, with too much structure, groups get overwhelmed by rules and procedures, and can't accomplish anything innovative or constructive. Successful action-learning groups balance between too many rules and not enough, a fine line between paralysis and chaos. Make the ground rules clear at the group's first meeting. Norms that enhance group learning are:

• Questions come before statements – Every statement must be in response to a question. Several statements may respond to a single question.
• The coach may intervene – Action-learning coaches do not focus on solving the problem but rather on helping the group function effectively. When the coach intervenes, the group should stop working and listen to the coach's questions.
• The coach only asks questions – The coach does not make statements, but rather asks questions. The coach should recognize that the members may have a great deal at stake in solving the problem and should be considerate and economical about intervention. The coach should not take a position or make a sweeping statement (or any other kind of statement) to get the group quickly to his or her desired resolution.

“Briefly defined, action learning is a powerful problem-solving tool that has the amazing capacity to simultaneously build successful leaders, teams and organizations.”

The seven stages of action learning are:

1. Group formation – The organization may determine the group's membership, or the members may be volunteers; the group may address a single problem or multiple problems and may be continuous or time-limited. Action learning requires a group.
2. Problem presentation – The organization presents a single problem or the members each present a problem. Then members ask questions to clarify their understanding of the problem.
3. Problem reframed – After discussing and reflecting on the problem with the help of the coach, the group re-phrases and reframes it. Sometimes the rephrased problem may differ from the original. The original problem may have been how to reduce the time that customers wait in line for customer service; after probing questions, the problem as rephrased may be how to schedule counter staff or improve technology to enable a quicker resolution of customer problems.
4. Identification of goals – Having identified the crucial issue, the group sets goals whose achievement will solve the problem in the long term.
5. Devising strategies for action – Using inquiry, probing questions and careful reflection, the group identifies possible action strategies and undertakes pilot trials to identify the best strategy, all things considered.
6. Implementation of the strategy – The group gathers information, builds support and takes action to carry the strategy forward.
7. Learning capture – The group is recorded throughout the action learning process, from when the coach asks questions that prompt reflecting on what the members have learned to how they have performed and what they can do to improve.

“The potency gained from this learning transforms individuals, teams and organizations.”

The twelve steps to take to introduce an action-learning program in your organization are:

1. Enlist top management backing.
2. Schedule a workshop to prepare for action learning.
3. Select problems or issues for the group to address.
4. Designate and train coaches.
5. Decide on members of the action learning groups.
6. Conduct orientation for the groups.
7. Implement the action learning process.
8. Define problems as they are reframed and identify strategies.
9. Conduct pilot tests and make action recommendations.
10. Implement the recommended actions.
11. Wrap up, review and capture the lessons learned.
12. Review and calculate the value of action learning. Expand it in the organization.