Update March 2020
Our in-house action learning sets can be delivered virtually. Please see our dedicated webpage to explore this option to help keep your learning and development plans on track whilst home working is being encouraged.
For any organisation or business to survive, the rate of learning must be at least equal to the rate of change” Reg Revans
What makes a successful organisation?
The global workplace is increasingly complex and competitive, requiring multi-dimensional leadership skills to manage the challenges faced. Those in leadership positions at whatever level, need to exude positive direction, enabling and empowering their people to adapt in the face of change and adopt a flexible, inquisitive approach to work.
In a successful organisation, staff seek and find elegant solutions to problems as a matter of course, they thrive, collaborate, grow and make continuous progress.
Action learning enables leaders to develop those personal, intellectual and emotional skills to question, reflect and embed the learning in the system.
How action learning contributes to organisational development
In-house action learning programmes contribute to OD by providing a structured time to develop reflective practice and critical thinking within your organisation. Reflective practice enables leaders to become fluid at complex problem solving and to positively affect the culture of the organisation. Action learning operates in the space where individual insight through reflective learning works to impact the whole system.
Your organisation may be facing some of the following situations. If so, action learning can bring about a direct positive impact on the outcomes and objectives you set for your organisation:
- Managing change – whether project based or continuous such as culture change
- Developing stakeholder engagement and partnership working
- Increasing the rate of learning in organisations and building learning communities
- Radically improving performance in work based projects with action learning as the core approach to peers working together
- Developing leadership capacity and resilience integrating action learning into leadership development programmes
- Working creatively with resistance to change by involving people as part of the solution
- Finding new ways of working and problem solving in peer groups which encourage double loop learning
The business case for embedding action learning in organisational development
Skills learned during the action learning process cannot be un-learned. As participants learn from personal experience, growth and managing real challenges in the workplace, they retain those skills for use over and over again.
The individual change that happens in the reflective action learning space is embedded in the whole system by leaders, and through their behaviour change, all tiers of management become involved in positively changing the culture.
In short, embedding life-long reflective learning skills will deliver a sustained commitment to proactive problem solving, influencing the culture shift across the whole organisation.
Recommended reading
Delberth Hemley took part in action learning sets 13 years ago. He says the experience was profound, and has shaped his work in each organisation he has worked in ever since. Read his story.
