CYPRUS
ACADEMY
OF PUBLIC
ADMINISTRATION
Directors of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration
(DISPA) Meeting
Enhancing the impact of learning
on organisational performance
Action Learning
Dr Pete Mann
Manchester
11th-12th October 2012
Nicosia
‘Action Learning: Developing
Individual, Group and Organisation’
Part I
II
Concept and Method – underpinnings
III
Participant Application – all of us to
engage that part tomorrow morning
Demonstration – one part of action
learning method
All the time: “How can action learning enhance
impacts when my agenda is threatened and client
departments are struggling with cutbacks . . .?”
Action Learning and 2012 DISPA:
two ‘thematic axes’ this year
1. “transferring off-the-job learning to the
work situation”
2. “promoting on-the-job learning in
which learning and work performance
coincide”
• Action learning can be located along
either or both of these axes . . .
So Who / What Benefits
from Action Learning . . .?
1. The development of the individual
2. The performance of others working
around / with the individual
3. The individual’s organisation:
institutional capacity building
and during an economic crisis, these
benefits do not have to cost much . . .
Part I: Concept and Method
1. Where did it come from ? Its evolution: from
where did its key principles derive ?
2. What is it ? Its chief characteristics: how to
differentiate it from other kinds of
experience-based learning ?
3. What does it look like ? Implementating it:
Getting started and maintaining it
4. When not to use it ? Mis-applications: where
is it not ‘fit for purpose’ ?
1.1 Evolution of Action Learning
period in
Revans’ life
•
•
•
•
academic seminars of Nobel
Prize scientists
community civil-defence
defusing of bombs
education for coal mine
(colliery) managers
noting different hospital
discharge rates for same
operations on similar wards
key principle in
action learning
= asking questions out of
ignorance
= people cooperating
under pressure
= learning with and from
each other
= communicating
uncertainty to superiors
1.2 Differentiating Action Learning
• “Oh. We’re already doing it . . .”
• Project-based learning or inter-active training
NOT action learning: action learning demands
you take responsibility for consequences . . .
• Parallels with experiential learning
Experiential Learning
as Action Learning
taking action
on site
1 engage
challenge
4 alter
approach
2 review
progress
3 plan
next steps
learning
in set
Re-cap of Core Elements
• Projects
: real problems / real
time / real managers
• Organisational system : a problem ‘owner’
who wants results
: a project ‘sponsor’
who delegates authority
•Action learning sets
: a group of action
learners who meet regularly over time to
challenge and support each other in turn
1.3 Puzzles vs Problems
• Puzzle
– an embarrassment to which a
solution already exists
– where there is one right
answer
– Eg: ‘Who killed the butler?’
• Problem – no known / existing solution
– different people will suggest
different courses of action
– Eg: ‘How do you reduce
corruption in Limassol?’
Diagnostic Analysis
1. What are we trying to do ?
2. What is stopping us from doing it ?
3. What might we be able to do about it ?
Stakeholder Analysis
1. Who knows about this problem ?
2. Who cares about it ?
3. Who can do anything about it ?
1.4 Don’t Use Action Learning When...
• The learning is ‘programmable’
• Answers already known or ‘solutions’ more
easily / cheaply available by other means
• Systematic analysis or consultancy can
provide the solution
• Colleagues only want ‘peer support’
• The top person / top management are
determined to go their own way – regardless
Part I cont’d on Concept and Method:
from ‘the Simple’ to the ‘Less Easy’. . .
5. The learning equation: a relevant ‘take-away’
from DISPA ?
6. Different ways to set up action learning
programmes to take account of . . .
- level of improvement alongside nature of
organisation(s) involved
- impact of learning on individual alongside
phase of their career development
1.5 The Learning Equation:
What Do Leaders / Managers Need ?
• What in this decade are priorities for public
sector management ?
• How much will it help if public administration
persists to function as it has in the past ?
• What can institutes / schools do to enable
managers to contend with more uncertainty ?
The Learning Equation:
P = Programmed instruction – what we know:
we store it / disseminate it / teach it
+
Q = Questioning insight – what we come to
know out of our ignorance and confusion: by
posing ‘fresh’ questions / asking: “What
would happen if . . .?” / making mistakes /
dreaming. For Revans, Q = stochastic . . .!
L = P
+ Q
1.6 One Organisation /
one Group Project / a Single Set
all set members
work on same change
at their normal place of work
Different Organisations in Familiar
System / Similar Projects / One Set
?
set members work in
same jobs in different places
improving the administrative system
Different Departments in Similar
Systems / New Challenges
set members work
in different job roles
in familiar organisations
Different Organisations / Different
Projects / one or Many Sets
set members work
in different job roles
in unfamiliar organisations
Early Action Learning Programmes
P R O B L E M
S
E
T
T
I
N
G
KNOWN
UNKNOWN
K
N
O
W
N
1
quality
circles
Sweden
3
Hospital Internal
Communications
England
U
N
K
N
O
W
N
2
National
Coal Board
Britain
4
private sector
programme
Belgium
Locating Action Learning in the
Organisational System
type of
action learning
level in
organisation
familiar job /
familiar setting
?
familiar job /
unfamiliar setting
?
unfamiliar job /
familiar setting
?
unfamiliar job /
unfamiliar setting
?
Locating Action Learning in the
Organisational System
type of
action learning
4. unfamiliar / unfamiliar
3. unfamiliar / familiar
2. familiar / unfamiliar
1. familiar / familiar
level in
organisation
Preview of Parts II and III
• Part II – after the break: ’fishbowl’ of action
learning set meeting (only a glimpse:
meeting for the first time !)
• Part III – participant application tomorrow:
1) in plenary, review of today’s Part II
2) then we all join sets: a few people in each
set to review and plan progress on real
challenge back home; others to practice
core skills of support and challenge
3) tonight, think of a real problem / issue . . .
After break: keep 1 eye on topic, 1 eye on process
Part I contd: Concept and Method
• Two core skill sets in action learning
• When we do use each, especially in the set ?
• Criteria for their use
Range of Core Skills
Supportive
Challenging
- Offers space
- Listens ‘actively’
- Turns questions back
- Poses fresh question
- Suggests / guides
- Provides feedback
Validates / draws out
information is in the other
for solving problem / improving performance –
builds ‘inner’ capacity
Provides / gives new
information to the
other for problem
solving / action – adds
‘outer’ authority
‘Who Names What we Talk About ?’
Challenging
Supportive
I offer direction to the
I make space for
conversation; I select
other to select / stay
what we might discuss
with what we
– ‘I’m pushing towards’
discuss ‘I’m pulling
out’
Range of skills
available to me
Space / silence
Active listening
Reflective questions
Querying
Suggesting /guiding
Giving feedback
SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES OF ACTIVE
LISTENING
Supportive
Listening ‘actively’
Range of skills
available to me
“We begin by saying that nobody should try
action learning unless they are deadly serious
about the need for getting out of some present
mess . . . Indeed, it has been observed that,
unless the participants are actually under some
penalty for failure – as distinct from a reward
for success – they are not always likely to be as
honest and straightforward about their
motivations and their hang-ups as their
colleagues have a right to expect. . . . [For]
action learning sets are tough.”
Reg Revans, “What is Action Learning?”
Journal of Management Development, I, 3, 1982
“‘This is suffering – this have I declared’; is the first
principle of action learning that men learn only most
readily when faced with trouble, or suffering, from
which they wish, for reasons known best to themselves, to escape. There is nothing like the threat of
trouble to promote thought, even although the response is confused, ineffective or dangerous. . . . Unless people are sick, hurt, embarrassed or otherwise in
difficulty, they tend not to question their existing
condition. . . . Hence the identification of suffering as
an opening condition of change or improvement by
Buddhism and by action learning theory alike.”
Revans, “The Immemorial Precursor: Action Learning Past & Present” The Origins
and Growth of Action Learning (Chartwell-Bratt Ltd, Bromley), 1982, pp 529-545
Anxiety as the Characteristic Quality
of a Hospital . . .
“Hospitals are institutions cradled in anxiety.
Patients are anxious . . . Junior nurses are
anxious . . . often tormented by the fear . . .
Sisters are often anxious . . . charged with
frequent emotional crises . . . Consultants . . .
are often at heart anxious . . . principal officers
of hospitals are uneasy . . . All this is evidence
of an ever-present uncertainty.”
Revans, “Operational Research and Hospital Administration,”
in Origins and Growth of Action Learning, 1982, pp 250-271
CHARACTERISTICS OF
BEING A MANAGER
1. Idolisation of past experience
2. Charismatic influence of other managers
seen as being successful
3. Drive towards immediate activity: ‘Do it
now!’
4. The need for others to know their place
and the need to keep them in their place
Personal development: self regulation
and esteem
• “Set meetings also really shaped how I deal with relationships and others.
Researcher: Can you give an example?
That this programme forces reflection, sometimes to uncomfortable degrees. For
example, I reviewed [in the set] a conflict with a very senior person. It was very
helpful: I might have blown it. The set offered a voice of reason, against my voice of
passion (VI,4).
• It may take a year and a dozen set meetings in JULIP before a professional can trust
owning outright what the problem might be: that a part of it may be a part of him:
“It’s only the last two or three set meetings I have begun to feel comfortable in
sharing real issues bothering me at work, and put these on the table. Offloading:
‘This is about me.’
Because I am proud that’s been hard . . . [But] I could carry it back to the set. It was
a place you felt safe.”
Personal Development: “how
confident we are feeling”
• We then moved to a lot more depth and honesty: ‘This is what I want to
talk about.’ Not ‘what we ought to be talking about’ (VI,2).
The group has also been there in some tough times. One or two moments
when there has been a strong challenge, for example, when [name of
colleague in set] said to me, ‘Are you running away . . .?’ (V,1).
• “to say what needs saying” (I,2)?
. . . we have all become more open to the idea of exploring issues with
other people, and in particular with people not directly involved in that
immediate area of work. In fact, feedback would suggest that we all now
actively encourage and even organise this outside of our JULIP set.
Egs of Social Problem Solving:
Enhanced Organisational Impact
• the harder-to-measure, softer elements of change
management that win hearts and minds:
“. . . employers [concerned with hard indicators, targets, etc] .
. . need to hear stories about soft issues. They fix on the
speed of change and level of monitoring improvement . . . But
it [JULIP] is about investing in things underlying the hard
measures.”
These professionals are being helped to address both task and
people in driving change. The analysis has depicted the joining
up of action meeting twin requirements in interorganisational
partnership, of interdependence – “Getting right the
imperative of customer service” – and of trust – “with good
staff relationships” (IV,5).
Egs of Challenge
• Successful experience of taking risks and dealing
openly with each other in the set appears associated
with renewed will outside the set in joint working to
constructively confront others:
“[In work] I am willing [now] to ask the questions and
make the challenges. And sitting at PCT level with
grassroots perspectives, I’m quite willing to challenge
and ask what this really means for the patient.
Perhaps I wouldn’t have before.”
Egs of Support
• The process underlying this learning seems to endorse both
the rational and the emotional. Experts who know change
leadership, people whose jobs are to profess P in how we can
change our organisations, advocate a seamless method of
“Speaking to people’s feelings . . . not just thoughts” in order
to go “deeper than the conscious and analytic part of our
brains” (Kotter and Cohen, 2002, pp x and 182). Is action
learning reaching the part of the brain that taught coursework
doesn’t? Can set meetings orchestrate limbic resonance – that
“symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation”
through which today’s interorganisational professionals
“become attuned to each other’s inner states” (Lewis et al,
2001, p 63)?
• Some sets in JULIP seem to offer scope for learning these
kinds of significant change-management skills by creating a
space where professional development and personal growth
combine seamlessly. The assimilation of appreciative
tolerance for proceeding interdependently and of empathic
discipline for acting trustworthily appears nurtured through
joined up action learning and researching. A connection is
implied between successful experience “in the set [where]
you can really concentrate on and challenge in depth
somebody’s issue” (I,3) and confidence outside the set – first
to trust the process of “really question[ing] what you are
doing” (VII,5), and secondly to trust others to lead a similarly
powerful process of raising “What questions do we need to be
answering?”
S E T T I N G
Familiar
P
R
O
B
L
E
M
1
Familiar
quality circles
Unfamiliar
2
Hospital
Internal
Communications
project
Unfamiliar
3
National
Coal
Board
4
Belgium
project