In today’s world of rapid change, leaders and organizations must evolve faster than the white water rapids we are cascading through. Organizations that simply try to improve on the current benchmark will not survive, they must invent the products and methods that will define the new standard. To do this, they must shift to being a learning organization that is open to change. The flexibility and robustness of action learning lead to agile leaders, agile teams, and ultimately agile learning organizations. These changes must come from the top. Read More

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The beauty of Action Learning is its process. You just can’t read it from a book and suddenly own it. It is like a form of art. You must do it, practice it, and become better each day until intuition takes over your choices. Becoming a musician, playing in an orchestra or ensemble, and practicing Action Learning has a lot of similarities. As a musician, you must practice getting better on your instrument, but at the same time, you must solve the problems which are holding you back to become a genuine performer. These problems are mainly mental. Read More

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Action Learning changes our world view. It prompts us to work together, expands into new contexts and provides solutions in the most unexpected places. This was Mat’s on ground recent experience working in Papua New Guinea. This magnificent country contains a very significant portion of the world’s biodiversity, most of which is on customarily owned land and sea. The people are legal custodians, responsible for social, economic and environmental sustainability – goals that are often in tension with each other. It’s no wonder that mainstreaming conservation at the customary level has been tough going. Read More

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The Adult Learning Symposium is a bi-annual learning event organized by the Institute of Adult Learning, an institute under SkillsFuture Singapore. This year, the symposium took place on 1-2 November at Sands Expo and Convention Centre with the theme “Work and Learning: Conquer New Frontiers!” Against a backdrop of rapid technological advancements, disruption across industries, and fast-changing workforce needs, the challenges facing adult learning are momentous. But for the adaptable and resilient, it is also time to seize the opportunities hidden in the sea of challenges and thrive in times where disruption is the norm. Read More

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Action learning has been a core part of the Cru leadership program (SLI) since 2005. Cru, a global Christian non-profit organization with over 25,000 staff in 191 countries, uses action learning not only to build great leaders but also to solve major problems faced by the organization and its volunteers. Mike Marquardt and Bea Carson provided a 4- day CALC training program for 22 senior leaders in December 2018. The Cru action learning program follows the format shown in this graphic. Each participant also receives an Action Learning Handbook. Read More

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Three days in Washington DC. In August 2017, the International Coach Federation held its first large-scale global conference since 2012, ICF Converge, which brought together coaches from all over the world to network and learn from each other. Held in Washington DC, ICF Converge was designed to strengthen connections across the coaching community and offer best-practice learning around topics such as the art and practice of coaching, how to develop a successful coaching business, how to create a coaching culture within an organization, coaching science, and the future of coaching and of the workforce. Read More

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An AL team developed more than 40 strategies to address these challenges. The solutions included rap lyrics for customer service, shirts with logos that fit within the bank’s branding scheme, quarterly meetings with fun activities, a “meet-and-greet” training initiative on how to exchange pleasantries with customers, and a new reward system for service staff. Sample rewards are vouchers for vacations, shopping trips, and electronic products, items that are less expensive than those top management had been considering. Read More

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The participants of the ALS training comprised mainly experienced mental health nurses, who wanted to advance a particular project they had been tasked with and or implement a new way of thinking about how they engaged in problem solving approaches. Problem-solving approaches in mental health nursing has generally been based on a consensus model which seeks to obtain the agreement of those concerned. In contrast, action learning and in particular the use of Socratic questions to critically examine an issue is based more on dialectical inquiry where values and assumptions are challenged. Read More

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Co-ordinating a system of national and regional reserves is a challenge in anyone’s language. Papua New Guinea (PNG) has over 8oo distinct languages, spanning a country of immense natural and cultural diversity, most of which is under traditional customary ownership. The PNG Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (CEPA) is the government agency responsible for implementing the national policy on establishing and managing protected areas. The challenge it faces is to facilitate management plans for a system of reserves that protect PNGs unique natural and cultural values. Read More

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WOW! For years I’ve talked about that how well Action Learning works regardless of culture or industry. For this session we were fortunate to be a truly global group. We had representation from five countries representing four continents – Indonesia, Japan, Abu Dhabi, Australia, and the USA were represented – truly a global team. As we would expect the process worked particularly because of the diverse nature of the team. Over the course of the two days, we had three practice sessions after the demonstration. The problems were equally diverse one culture in nature, another facilities related, another personal challenge. Read More

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Michael Marquardt, professor at George Washington University, has often quoted anthropologist Margaret Mead, who once stated: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” What happens during an Action Learning session, with up to eight participants and a coach, is the activation of the group’s collective intelligence through an ancient and intrinsically human technique: the use of questions. By rescuing curiosity and putting empathic listening into practice, it is possible to find new paths to navigate demanding situations. Read More

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The head of an SME of about 50 people in the printing sector located in the Bordeaux region of France that I met through a short presentation about action learning in a Rotary club wanted to experiment this method to work on their strategic plan for the next five years. After a preliminary meeting in the company where I explained the principles, components, and rules of AL to him, he very smartly set up a team of six persons with an adequate diversity of gender, age, experience, and function. He included in this group one person from outside the company who did not really know the company very well. Read More

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As coaches, many of us use action learning to solve problems and challenges faced by our clients. Most of these challenges are internal business opportunities that when worked on by employees using action learning can help move an organization forward. But what if the challenge were instead presented by a third-party organization, while the group that was solving the problem came predominantly from a different company? And what if the third-party organization was focused on a social challenge? Could action learning bring the two organizations together? Read More

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During my 15 years with the large pharma / chemical concern Bayer, I have had various roles in various disciplines in several countries. Employees in Bayer benefit from lots of training and I have experienced many management and team development processes and programs. During my assignment as Head of Marketing Bayer Netherlands, I came across a situation where the company was doing very well financially, but in my conversations with the employees, I discovered that they were less and less proud to tell at social events that they work for Bayer. Read More

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Recognizing the need to improve how we solve problems, we started introducing Action Learning to the organization. What started as Action Learning clinics in several departments to help identify urgent key issues grew into Action Learning in Action workshops focusing on the process experience. Problems presented ran the gamut from challenges faced at work to issues at home. Recurrent themes in these one-day sessions include employee engagement, clarity of goals, interpersonal communications, finding work-life balance, improving business unit performance and managing relationships at home. Read More

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