Kathryn Winterburn

Crafting action learning to the context

The four Accounts of Practice in this edition are all written from the perspective of authors who have initiated action learning sets. They cover four different, methods of, action learning: critical action learning (CAL); action learning with appreciative enquiry; virtual action learning (VAL) based on World Institute for Action Learning (WIAL); and action learning based on Reg Revans. There are also four rather different sets of participants: executive coaches, staff in residential care homes, senior leaders and Ph.D. students. In each case, the choice of method was conscious and deliberate. Arthur Turner, David Lees and Sally Crompton (CAL) were looking for an academically strong approach which would enhance the professional skill of the coaches they were seeking to support. Wendy Penney, Julienne Meyer, Penny Cash, Lisa Clinnick and Louise Martin (AL + AE) working with staff in residential homes who often had very little formal education. They wanted to start with what works. Phil Radcliff and his senior leaders were all new to action learning and welcomed the business friendly and structured approach provided by WIAL. Trevor Marchand (Revans) was particularly interested in helping his Ph.D. students to enhance their questioning insight and their listening skills. No matter the apparent differences much emerges in common from these encouraging accounts. Evaluation and participant feedback from the four initiatives indicate that each of the sets provided opportunity for its members to connect meaningfully with a group of peers. The participants all valued the creation of a safe space, ‘a haven of sanity and reflection’ (McGill & Brockbank, 2004, p. 13 in Turner et al.) There they were able to listen, question, review and reappraise. This momentary relief from the many pressures that they faced was no retreat from reality. Almost without exception, these processes proved to be revitalising and re-energising. They emerged from these places of safety with the will to move beyond their habitual behaviour, to change their practice, to push at boundaries, and to continue to question and reflect. In Critical action learning: a method or strategy for peer supervision of coaching practice, Arthur Turner, David Lees and Sally Crompton describe how and why they have created action learning sets for university coaching and mentoring graduates. Aware that qualified coaches are expected to engage in regular supervision, they realised that the university was not offering them any supervisory support once the course had finished. They were aware that, once qualified, coaches usually work in isolation. This meant that, in deciding what kind of support would be most effective, they wanted to find a process that would bring coaches together as peers rather than rely on the supervisor/supervisee model that has been borrowed from the therapeutic professions. Clear that they needed to embed equality within the learning process, they wanted to create a shared space for non-hierarchical reflective practice and provide a structured way for the coaches to meet regularly and with purpose. To meet the requirements of supervision, the process would need be: Formative – building competencies and capabilities; Normative – ensuring adherence to professional and ethical norms; and Restorative (in Pelham, 2016). They were drawn to CAL because of its theoretical underpinning and because it provides a crucial balance between challenge and support. The set has continued to meet every two months for four years, even though some members of the set have had

A mirror in which to practice -- using action learning to change end-of-life care

While action learning is a familiar tenet of much management and leadership development activity within the NHS it is not commonly utilised within the education and development of doctors where didactic methods remain the preferred mechanism to impart factual knowledge necessary to fulfil the autonomous practitioner role. Within the specialism of palliative medicine, the implementation of a national end-of-life (EoL) care strategy will challenge this predilection. The new strategy seeks to enable more people to die in the place of their choosing as such it requires clinicians outside the speciality of palliative care to make it a routine part of their practice. Since doctors are trained to cure or extend life, the strategy requires specialists to change their practice, behaviour and communication to engage the patient and family in decision-making and planning for the EoL. An intensive development programme utilising action learning methods is currently being piloted in two acute hospital settings to equip a small group of specialist senior clinicians to deliver the required changes. This paper describes the use of action learning within this context to explore its utility with an uninitiated and sceptical audience.

An invitation to reflect on facilitation and evaluation within action learning

The role and value of the facilitator within action learning has long been an area of interest with different schools proffering varying perspectives on the dominance and function of the facilitato...

Action learning: from individual learning to organisational development

In the three accounts in this edition, as is usual in this section of the journal, what creates the difference is the context and purpose of each intervention. The first account describes an ongoing programme within the UK Civil Service where action learning is a key part of an organisational development programme. The second is an inquiry into the practice of social commissioning which combines action research, appreciative inquiry and action Learning. In the third a student on a DBA programme reflects on the possibility of introducing action learning into his professional practice. The OD initiative focuses on enabling individual staff to cope with increasing unpredictability and complexity. One of the commissioning Senior HR Directors said that they wanted the HR community to have more ‘useful trouble makers’ in it, people with slightly ‘sharper elbows’. In the second paper the action research central purpose was an aspiration to help professionals to listen to and learn from their patients. In the third the intention to include action learning in professional practice emerged from reflection on personal experience. The three papers also illustrate different approaches to organisational development. The first is driven by a desire to break down barriers and develop stronger links between the various arms of government. In the second, the research process reveals the implications for the wider system which emerge in the discussions about what has been learned from the patients’ stories about what has helped them move towards greater well-being. In the third situation, currently marked by a prescriptive approach to training, the purpose is to enable practitioners to talk to meaningfully to each other about their practice. The organisational impact has yet to emerge. In ‘From Nurturing the H in HR to Developing the D in OD – Systemic benefits where action learning and Organisational Development combine.’ Richard Hale, Carolyn Norgate and James Traeger reflect on their experience of combining action learning questioning with a humanistic approach to Organisational Development in the UK Civil Service. Their ongoing aim is to build more effective links within and between the ministries, departments and agencies of government and to help to develop a culture that supports the people who are having to respond to situations of increasing uncertainty and complexity. The authors suggest that events such as terror attacks and Grenfell Tower require the ‘mobilisation of a mind-set, attentive to relationships and plans on the ground, that is reflexive, responsive and systemic’. Their review is based on three perspectives: participants written accounts of their learning as part of a post graduate qualification; events where graduates told their stories about the impact of the programme; and the authors’ review of their own experience and learning as facilitators. They describe themselves as a form of action learning set within this process, learning with and from each other. The story telling element involved a series of three three-hour workshops, with former participants of the OD&D programmes. In small groups each person had just 3 min to tell a story of a time when they felt they most made a difference as an OD practitioner. Each group then inquired more deeply into each of the stories and worked together to extract common themes. The findings that emerge

Impacts and effects of action learning in practice

The three Accounts of Practice in this edition give us an overview of how action learning has been used in the public sector and educational institutions as a supportive learning tool whilst also tackling real issues and concerns. In the first account we learn how action learning is used to tackle a critical issue within an organisation that affects people outside of it. This is a common theme throughout the use of action learning both theoretically and practically. In the second account this theme is followed further looking at how it is used as a supporting tool and method to help students transition from an academic to a clinical environment in a medical school. The final account offers a different but none-the-less interesting account of how action learning is used alongside accrediting the programme without compromising the quality and outcomes. In An Action Learning Approach to the Question: Are Ambulance Response Time Targets Achievable? Slater’s account of practice uses an action learning study to address this question. The account sits within the context of the ambulance service in the UK failing to achieve the national ambulance response times claiming to be overstretched due to increasing demand, particularly from the elderly and limited funding. Slater outlines the frustrations of staff and the financial pressures which have led to ‘management in silos’ where even low cost opportunities for improvement are ignored even if there would be substantial benefits to the health service as a whole. Against this background Slater tells his account from his non-executive director role of one of the ambulance trusts. Having experience in a different sector, Slater introduced action learning to identify and implement operational changes targeted to improve both ambulance response times and patient outcomes while reducing cost within the National Health Service (NHS). The objective was to identify issues by means of collaborative learning and establish alternative patterns of working with ambulance and other resources to achieve defined targets. Accordingly, 2 action learning sets met over a period of 18 months with staff at all levels in the Trust. The first consisted of volunteers who worked similar shifts were established in each area; the first from front line operating staff, and the second, from support staff. Both the sector manager and I co-ordinated the discussions and brought both individuals from different sets and third-parties together in a ‘mixed set’ when joint interests occurred. As well as the practice of the action learning sets, Slater also conducted a study of them proffering insights and recommendations. He argues a key issue was understanding the Trust wide picture and where acceptable new procedures could provide economic benefits to the Trust, benefits to the patients and help achieve the response time targets. A simulation model driven by parameters agreed by the action learning sets provided proof that new procedures would generate the required benefits. The learning sets also identified that the public should adjust their expectations to understanding that an immediate front line ambulance response would only be despatched in life threatening cases but there would be alternative slower responses for all other cases. Slater concludes that the sets identified hidden issues, offered alternative solutions and broke down NHS organisational ‘silos’. The process also generated the need for specific data to determine the right place and right time to implement potential solutions to maximise patient outcomes, achieve the ambulance response time targets and minimise costs.

On being curiously safe

Action learning is both ambitious and ambiguous with few prescriptions on how to do it well. What we can do is to share our experiences of facilitating action learning sets and these accounts of practice focus on creating a safe place to learn about self, task and organization whether as a participant or a facilitator. We travel the world with four accounts from four different continents and in four different contexts. We start in Tasmania where Cother examines a multi organizational action learning programme whose purpose is to create a sustainable economy. This raises an issue ofmanaging levels of trust betweenorganizations. This is followedby thediscussion of the anxieties that action learning can raise inWells, Gibb and Animashaun, account of practice in Cambridge, UK. The discussion on anxiety follows stories from the designer, facilitator and evaluators and the process they used collectively to overcome this.We then visit Indonesiawhere Luckman examines her ownpractice as a facilitator and suggests that a structured process helps participants to feel safe in the set. Lastly, we visit South Africa where Robinson takes participant anxiety as her theme and explores in detail the paradox for the facilitator in creating a stimulating learning environment with recognizing that over stimulation can inhibit the learning. So let’s start in Tasmania with Genevieve and Bob Cothers account of delivering Business Action Learning Tasmania. The programme that was developed is set in the context of a declining economy. The BALT programme has demonstrated the potential for self-directed action learning betweenorganizations in a regional area to grow the local economy. There is evidence in the programme that participants experienced confusion in the action learning process at the beginning. The facilitators describe how they worked through stages of trust to reach opportunities that allowed them to collaborate for mutual benefit. Moving to the UK Wells, Gibb, and Animashaun have produced an Account of Practice Action learning as an element within an Assessed and Supported Year in Employment for Newly Qualified Social Workers: A three role perspective that describes the use of Action Learning in a local authority social work department. The three colleagues involved in the programme as designer (accoucheur), facilitator and evaluator speak to us about their experience within a programme to support the assessed year in practice that newly qualified social workers are enrolled to. Each contributor talks openly about the anxiety of their role and how they addressed this by creating their own safe place to reflect on themselves as a team, their own role and the collective mission of the project. It was this structure of the facilitators action learning set that is described as key to supporting each other’s practice, overcoming the

Accounts of practice [Editorial]

The theme of creating and sustaining spaces in which participants in action learning can engage in deep and critical reflection runs through the four Accounts of Practice in this edition of the journal. This is not just a matter of providing a place to meet away from daily preoccupations. The authors are describing and explaining some interestingly different approaches: models; concepts; routines: processes and activities they use with participants in action learning sets. These are designed to help very busy people to reflect, re-think and re-frame before taking more deliberative action on the issues and problems they are facing at work. They are aiming to create spaces that are both safe and stimulating enough for the participants to engage in the hard task of challenging what needs to be challenged and doing what needs to be done. The sets are in different countries with participants from very different organisations. All the participants are under pressure, faced with high expectations at work and with equally high aspirations about what use they will make of the action learning process and what they will be able to do better as a consequence. In Doing Different Things or Doing Things Different: Exploring the Role of Action Learning in Innovation, Christine Abbott and Michael Weiss present a model for understanding the rational and characteristics of innovation and how it may be enhanced by the practice of action learning. Working with Innozet, an innovation driven action learning centre in Graz, Austria, they are using action learning as a process to address ‘wicked problems’ set within what they describe as an ‘energetic environment with short cycles of enquiry and action’. They suggest that the rise of the specialist innovator has led to a tendency to leave it to the expert rather than encouraging innovation throughout an organisation and beyond. They have adapted Grint’s model of critical, tame and wicked problems to identify four different types of innovation; high impact/low involvement led by experts; localised improvements by individual/teams; networked incremental improvements with cumulative effect; and projects with wide involvement of people and high organizational/society impact. They present four case examples of action learning sets and explain the challenges each of them faced and the way each worked. They summarise what went well and what less well in each set and draw attention to some hindering factors. For example in one set the excitement of resolving one major issue seemed to be enough, in another the Action Learning set became seen as a rescue package rather than an impetus for further learning. They conclude that the role of the facilitator both within the sets and as an accoucheur in the wider organisation is critical. In Critical Action Learning – Rituals and Reflective Spaces, Pam Henneberry and Arthur Turner show how they work to re-structure both mental and physical space. They use key concepts and alter the environment to create new rituals and routines and begin to change habitual ways of behaving. The participants in the sets they describe are from the public sector, coping with cut backs, redundancies and reorganisation. They use

Art, reflection and transformation in action learning

The themes of reflection, reflective practice and methods that create the conditions for deep reflection are dominant within the four Accounts of Practice that follow. There is an interesting prominence upon the creative method within action learning that is mirrored in the actual writing of the Accounts of Practice. Van Meer and Shepherd describe the use of art and pictures as learning aids, and their respective accounts are peppered with this imagery, while Doherty’s chronicle of his own practice is itself an intense piece of personal reflection utilizing metaphor and reference to the music of Bob Dylan. Ruane’s account brings these themes to life through participant stories that reveal the transformative process of action learning. In Learning Through Artful Knowing, Pleuntje van Meer offers an unusual Account of Practice that focuses primarily upon reflection and practice with limited reference to action in the traditional sense of action learning. This is an exploration of learning as a transformative process written with reference to her own practice of learning that has benefitted from the ‘tension of action and reflection to become creative and to go beyond the previously known’. Faced with the realization that she had become ‘shallow’ in her own learning and reflective practice she cultivates her art-practice, specifically painting, as a means to deeper self-learning in order to better serve her organizational clients. Van Meer goes on to describe the process and practice of painting as non-directional and emergent which parallels the dialogic and emergent methods enacted in the corporate and organizational settings of her practice. For Van Meer learning is viewed as a social process that ‘leads to a new way of (individual) being’. Gary Shepherd’s Account of Practice describes the use of critical action learning (CRAL) in a manufacturing company in the North of England. Developing Deep Group Reflection Within a Critical Action Learning Set, Shepherd describes his role as facilitator which, unlike Van Meer, is unashamedly directive as he guides the set through reflective cycles using their hand drawn images to help reach a deeper level of reflection. By challenging the sets ‘taken for granted assumptions’ and their usual problem-solving methods, Shepherd helps the group to hold reflective conversations that over time generate new ideas and insight. In addressing their ‘wicked and messy’ business issues via CRAL the participants learn a new and transformative method of problem-solving, which brings business benefits. What Am I to Action Learning and Action Learning to Me? by Daniel Doherty is a journey through his personal experience of action learning throughout his career in which he is sometimes groupie, sometimes roadie and sometimes member of the band of action learning founders including Reg Revans and Mike Pedler. Using metaphor, and personal reflection, Doherty brings some of the history of action learning to life in order to challenge current practice which he argues is facing increasing commoditization and formulaic

Reflections of embedded action learning in the learning and transformational processes

The Accounts of Practice in this edition give us an almost auto-ethnographic experience of action learning either as set members within embedded action learning in courses or purveyors of implementing action learning within educational processes or during organisational transformational change. The four accounts provide us with real-life accounts on how action learning is used. All four offer us a personal narrative of their own perspectives on how action learning is used and their own experiences of using or being part of an ALS whether as student, course leader, facilitator or sponsor. The first two focus on action learning as embedded within a post-graduate qualification. The third is a reflection of learning to become an action-learning facilitator of action learning within an educational/professional context and the final account is focused on the process of action learning during an organisational transformation. In Action Learning in Virtual Higher Education: Applying Leadership Theory, Curtin’s account of practice reports the historical foundation of a university master’s degree which is focused of leadership capability development. Specifically, Curtin looks at a virtual leadership course which uses virtual action learning as a methodology that requires students to apply alternative perspectives of leadership using action learning. Usefully, Curtin sets the context of how action learning is used on the course by providing an overview and literature review of how action learning was applied by Revans, how virtual action learning was applied by Waddill and how action learning and virtual action learning were implemented in to the master’s programme. Curtin’s account of practice nicely reflects on the difference of the traditional ‘routes’ of action learning in comparison to how it is used in his context. He recognises how embedding an action-learning approach into a post-graduate academic programme requires participants to implement academically prescriptive means of leading others while attempting to solve problems, which differs from the practical routes of action learning/virtual action learning as set out by Revans and Waddill, whereby the ‘method’ was specifically not intended as an educational instrument. Additionally, Curtin’s course participants are students, not employed managers or professionals and as engaged on a leadership theory course, they are encouraged to apply leadership perspectives on a variety of situations and people. Curtin researches the use of action learning on the course by asking the 63 students if they thought applying leadership perspectives using action learning is better, the same or worse than considering leadership perspectives not using action learning. Curtin uses a questionnaire, the students’ reflective journals and a survey alongside the course evaluation data to address this question. The results show that students’ positive reactions to applying leadership theory using action learning outweighed the negative reactions and Curtin summarises how he believes applying leadership theory using action learning is better for students than considering leadership theory without using action learning in virtual higher education. In the context of using action learning in an academic course, Curtin believes a course-requirement should be that students apply leadership theory with this taking precedence over strict adherence to all principles of action learning. Final reflections within the account steer towards the need for

Problem, culture and education

The four accounts of practice in this edition of the journal originate in differing organisational contexts but arrive at some similar themes. The nature of problem proposition in action learning is considered in two of the accounts while action learning in an educational setting forms the basis of the other two accounts, surfacing issues of culture and context affect the success of the action learning set. Norgate and Traeger’s account of practice, A Safe Space to Stay Sharp: Action Learning Meets Cooperative Inquiry in the Service of NHS OD Capacity Building, describes the use of action learning as a research approach within an action research endeavour within the National Health Service (NHS). Interestingly, they describe the parallel processes that emerge in the action learning journey that is designed to build their own capacity and capability while considering the capacity and capability of a larger Organisation Development (OD) community. Norgate and Traeger were engaged in an action learning process as a form of inquiry that considered questions about OD practice as a counter cultural activity. The set’s ‘problem’ was their own learning process which surfaced internal anxieties about the perceived external views of the wider system. Individual learning occurred through intimacy and vulnerability on the part the participants, which is outside the cultural norms of an NHS system that is largely task-oriented. For this group then, action learning involved learning to suppress their natural problem-solving tendencies in order to hold the space for deep learning to occur. Thus, the process itself, as an inquiry method and means of development, ran counter to the prevailing operating culture. In his account of practice, Cast Your Net Widely: 3 Steps to Expanding and Refining Your Problem Solving in Action Learning Application, Simon Reese describes the use of action learning as a method to assist the design of a business strategy in a fast-growing organisation in South East Asia. Reese describes the steps he used with a stable and homogeneous group to help them to expand their problem definition in order to reach more diverse solutions to address the business requirements. In their deliberate concern with the specific problem as their start, both of these articles have an implicit ambition to generate solutions that are beyond the normative or instrumental. Reese refers to the need for Positive Deviants, while Norgate and Traeger describe a counter culture of action learning in their organisational context.