Action Learning: harnessing the power of peers
In times of incredible challenge, the tools to drive change and solve problems are more important than ever. They give us the power to guide organisations through crisis, work toward our shared strategic aims and cultivate long-term growth.
Why use Action Learning?
Action Learning is a method I’ve been using for more than 20 years. It’s a powerful and effective approach, because it isn’t problem-solving by diktat or a set template for all to follow. Instead, this is action that’s adaptive and flexible, yet built on a solid foundation of experience and co-learning. Above all else, it knits together the countless individual actions across a group (or groups) into one vast, collaborative effort – harnessing the power of peers to bring about profound change.
Among its many uses, it’s an effective framework for tackling what we call ‘wicked’ problems. And few of us have faced a more wicked problem than the coronavirus pandemic. Whether the group is made up of scientists collaborating on vaccine research, public health officials considering how to relax restrictions or senior managers working to pivot their organisation to a new reality, Action Learning can offer tremendous value.
What is the basis of Action Learning?
It all started with Reg Revans, an academic, author and consultant on management theory. While studying Astrophysics, he’d seen a group of preeminent physicists at work. These great men, including several Nobel winners were humble and open with each other – happy to ‘describe their ignorance’ to help solve their issues.
This formed the basis for an approach he developed in the post-war years, which gave the practitioners responsibility for improving performance, rather than some outside manager. Over the decades that followed, this evolved into the methodology we know today.
Crucially, Revans was a Quaker, which offers an insight into the equity of Action Learning. Just as a Quaker meeting is not lead by an individual cleric, an Action Learning set has no hierarchy. For Quakers, everyone is the clergy; for the Action Learning set, every member leads their own progress.
How Action Learning harnesses the power of peers.
While the model is adaptable to different groups and situations, the basic format involves at least one group of 5-8 people meeting every month or two. This is the ‘set’.
A set should be mixed, but far from a random selection. The process is at its most effective with a diversity of perspectives and positions, but with a common purpose, like a problem to be solved, an organisation to be changed or a best practice to be determined. Ideally, this is a group of people who – whatever their roles – share a ‘why’.
Whatever the job titles or pay grades outside, the set has no hierarchy. It isn’t led by the most senior person at the table and it can’t be dominated by the loudest voice in the room.
Hear how the brilliant School for Social Entrepreneurs describe Action Learning
Each member of the set is given a set time to talk about a problem they are tackling. This should be more than an everyday head-scratcher: an issue that the individual genuinely cares about, something which is their responsibility and which they have the power to influence.
While this is a method for solving that issue, it’s not the set’s role to make suggestions, offer advice or give instructions. Instead, it’s about employing the Socratic method; asking open questions to tease the pertinent answers from the individual, helping them discern the action they need to take. Then, when the set next meets, the individual can discuss the impact of that action – sharing what they’ve learned, before going through the process again to discern their next action.
“…providing a roadmap of evidence for others to follow.”
The Benefits of Action Learning for Peers.
For the individual, Action Learning is an opportunity to wrestle with the issue – cross examination forces them to look at every perspective, as well as considering their own role, responsibility and influence. The wider impact comes from a scientific cycle of experimentation, learning and sharing. Because each individual’s action is discussed and considered, the whole set learns each lesson: a group of ten will try ten different actions – testing their hypotheses before having the results reviewed by the peers.
While it’s up to each individual in the set to make the most of this cycle through their own development and behaviours, the process and its outcomes are documented and codified along the way – providing a roadmap of evidence for others to follow.
And, as the set meets many times, this is a process that happens again and again. Test, learn, share, test, learn, share. With each iteration, the set learns more, takes another step together and makes a deeper impact. Then, what starts with an individual action coalesces into a bold strategic direction that can carry the set (and the wider organisation) through an uncertain landscape.
Action Learning harnesses a lot of power.
It’s a powerful model for a solving problems – depending on the nature of that problem. Keith Grint, professor emeritus at Warwick University, outlined three types of problem we might face: critical problems that require a decisive answer, tame problems that need a systematic solution and wicked problems that have no simple solution. It’s for these wicked problems that Action Leaning is ideal.
These are the problems which are novel, widespread, complex and ambiguous. Covid-19 fits the description well, but it could equally be knife crime, civil war or a failing corporate culture. For these wicked problems, Action Learning provides a collaborative and evidence-led process that helps leaders lead.
And, because it involves testing the individual as much as the actions, this model is also a valuable tool for training leaders. Through the analysis and cross examination, the sets offer an excellent forum for assessing your own power and responsibility – understanding both your sphere of influence and your locus of action. By helping members of the set identify their actions and discern the best way ahead, the process helps you comprehend the issues that you can control and shows you how to control them.
Action Learning is a method for bringing about change on the widest scale. While each action is for the individual to test, the process of collaborative learning and iterative testing has an exponential impact. Start with the right sets, focused on the same broad aims, and Action Learning can drive whole systems change – transforming organisations at a strategic or cultural level.
Why Action Learning is important post pandemic.
The continuing impacts of the coronavirus pandemic will leave deep-rooted change in its wake. While many of us may be longing for a return to normality, it’s more likely that there will be a new normal to contend with. It’s up to all of us to take some control and reshape our normal – as many put it, to build back better.
Action Learning offers the perfect vehicle for driving and manging that process. Just as we’re all suddenly acquainted with remote meeting and video calls, your set could meet online and be just as effective. Then, for the months and years ahead, it can provide a forum for leading your organisation through the pandemic and out the other side.
I’m here to help. I’ve been designing and facilitating Action Learning sets since 1999, using them as part of several award-winning development programmes with major organisations. I can lay out an approach and format tailored for your organisation, as well as providing the training you’ll need to facilitate the sets in action.
You can read all about a major Action Learning programme I helped to design and facilitate with Drumchapel LIFE – an umbrella organisation for charities and community groups across the West of Scotland.
I’ve even created a guide that can offer a more in-depth examination of how it works and what it can deliver – which you can find on my products page.
Whether you’d like to share your own perspectives on Action Learning, or you’d like to discuss how to harness the model for your organisation, please feel free to get in touch.