This summer, MHA Institute started the Action learning Project. This project attempts to discover the effectiveness of using MHA’s unique approach to action learning in a variety of situations.
Reg Revans (1908-2003), the father of action learning, was a former astrophysicist who worked in the famous Cavendish laboratory with a number of Nobel laureates. During that time, he noticed that Sir Earnest Rutherford used a method of inquiry that required scientists to work together as a community to solve each other’s experimental problems. This was the birth of action learning as we know it today. From 1945 on, Revans developed action learning into a form used in organizations. A number of highly successful projects around the world brought action learning into common use.
In the early years of his work in action learning, Revans worked closely with managers and leaders in organizations. He believed that action learning helped managers to deal more effectively with complexity, change, and uncertainty. The reason it worked so well is that managers learned from real-life experience - they learned from their actions in real life, rather than from experts and case studies. Managers did this through a process that helped them to reflect on their experience, in order to learn from it. Then, they applied their learning in making informed decisions and taking effective actions. In 1965, Revans led a highly successful action learning experiment in Belgium that ultimately saved its steel industry from collapse.
Revans believed that everyone in an organization has ideas to contribute. If you can gain access to these ideas, you can tap into the unused potential in an organization. One way to do this is to create communities of reflection and action - communities of learning, which Revans called action learning sets. These sets were comprised of a group of strangers or a working team. In these sets, people learned from reflecting on action, and inquiring into real problems, issues, and opportunities. They decided on actions to take, and committed to these actions.
Action learning communities require all of their members to account for actions taken. Accountability occurs when members commit to taking action, then account to their members for what happened as a result. Unlike other processes that force accountability, action learning naturally creates accountability. This is because the focus is not on the action taken, but on the learning that occurs when action is either taken or not taken. For example, when a member of the community does not take action, he or she must still account for the failure to act. Instead of focusing on the fact that the person did not act, the community helps the person to learn from this experience. This process develops leadership skills in all of its members. Members become conscious of their behaviours, and take responsibility for their decisions and actions.
Action learning enhances individual, team, and organizational learning. It accomplishes this to such an extent that it can transform individuals, groups, and cultures, by creating ways of working that are based in valuing people and the relational systems they inhabit. And it even produces the tangible results that leaders so often desire: increased productivity, creativity, revenue generation, cost saving, and return on investment. What more can you ask?
The following is a list of reports that have been generated about the varied use of action learning: