Directors of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration (DISPA) Meeting

Enhancing the impact of learning on organisational performance

Action Learning

Dr Pete MannManchester

11th-12th October 2012Nicosia

CYPRUS ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

‘Action Learning: Developing Individual, Group and Organisation’

Part I Concept and Method – underpinnings II Demonstration – one part of action

learning method

III Participant Application – all of us to engage that part tomorrow morning

All the time: “How can action learning enhance impacts when my agenda is threatened and client departments are struggling with cutbacks . . .?”

Action Learning and 2012 DISPA: two ‘thematic axes’ this year

1. “transferring off-the-job learning to the work situation”

2. “promoting on-the-job learning in which learning and work performance coincide”

• Action learning can be located along either or both of these axes . . .

So Who / What Benefits from Action Learning . . .?

1. The development of the individual

2. The performance of others working around / with the individual

3. The individual’s organisation: institutional capacity building

and during an economic crisis, these benefits do not have to cost much . . .

Part I: Concept and Method

1. Where did it come from ? Its evolution: from where did its key principles derive ?

2. What is it ? Its chief characteristics: how to differentiate it from other kinds of experience-based learning ?

3. What does it look like ? Implementating it: Getting started and maintaining it

4. When not to use it ? Mis-applications: where is it not ‘fit for purpose’ ?

1.1 Evolution of Action Learning

• academic seminars of Nobel Prize scientists

• community civil-defence defusing of bombs

• education for coal mine (colliery) managers

• noting different hospital discharge rates for same operations on similar wards

= asking questions out of ignorance

= people cooperating under pressure

= learning with and from each other

= communicating uncertainty to superiors

period in Revans’ life

key principle in action learning

1.2 Differentiating Action Learning

• “Oh. We’re already doing it . . .”

• Project-based learning or inter-active training NOT action learning: action learning demands you take responsibility for consequences . . .

• Parallels with experiential learning

1 engage challenge

2 review progress

3 plan next steps

4 alter approach

Experiential Learning

learning in set

taking action on site

as Action Learning

Re-cap of Core Elements• Projects : real problems / real

time / real managers

a problem ‘owner’

: a group of action

• Organisational system :

•Action learning sets

who wants results: a project ‘sponsor’

who delegates authority

learners who meet regularly over time to challenge and support each other in turn

1.3 Puzzles vs Problems• Puzzle – an embarrassment to which a

solution already exists – where there is one right answer

– Eg: ‘Who killed the butler?’• Problem – no known / existing solution

– different people will suggest different courses of action – Eg: ‘How do you reduce

corruption in Limassol?’

Diagnostic Analysis1. What are we trying to do ?

2. What is stopping us from doing it ?

3. What might we be able to do about it ?

Stakeholder Analysis1. Who knows about this problem ?

2. Who cares about it ?

3. Who can do anything about it ?

1.4 Don’t Use Action Learning When...• The learning is ‘programmable’

• Answers already known or ‘solutions’ more easily / cheaply available by other means

• Systematic analysis or consultancy can provide the solution

• Colleagues only want ‘peer support’

• The top person / top management are determined to go their own way – regardless

Part I cont’d on Concept and Method:from ‘the Simple’ to the ‘Less Easy’. . . 5. The learning equation: a relevant ‘take-away’

from DISPA ?6. Different ways to set up action learning

programmes to take account of . . .- level of improvement alongside nature of organisation(s) involved

- impact of learning on individual alongside phase of their career development

1.5 The Learning Equation:What Do Leaders / Managers Need ?

• What in this decade are priorities for public sector management ?

• How much will it help if public administration persists to function as it has in the past ?

• What can institutes / schools do to enable managers to contend with more uncertainty ?

The Learning Equation:P = Programmed instruction – what we know:

we store it / disseminate it / teach it

+Q = Questioning insight – what we come to

know out of our ignorance and confusion: by posing ‘fresh’ questions / asking: “What would happen if . . .?” / making mistakes / dreaming. For Revans, Q = stochastic . . .!

L = P + Q

1.6 One Organisation / one Group Project / a Single Set

all set members work on same change

at their normal place of work

Different Organisations in Familiar System / Similar Projects / One Set

set members work in same jobs in different places

improving the administrative system

?

Different Departments in Similar Systems / New Challenges

set members work in different job roles

in familiar organisations

Different Organisations / Different Projects / one or Many Sets

set members work in different job roles in unfamiliar organisations

Early Action Learning Programmes

1qualitycircles

Sweden

3 Hospital InternalCommunications

England

2National

Coal BoardBritain

4 private sector

programmeBelgium

KNOWN

UNKNOWN

SETTING

P R O B L E MKNOWN UNKNOWN

Locating Action Learning in the Organisational System

familiar job / familiar setting

familiar job / unfamiliar setting

unfamiliar job / familiar setting

unfamiliar job / unfamiliar setting

type of action learning

level in organisation

?

?

?

?

Locating Action Learning in the Organisational System

4. unfamiliar / unfamiliar

3. unfamiliar / familiar

2. familiar / unfamiliar

1. familiar / familiar

type of action learning

level in organisation

Preview of Parts II and III• Part II – after the break: ’fishbowl’ of action

learning set meeting (only a glimpse: meeting for the first time !)

• Part III – participant application tomorrow: 1) in plenary, review of today’s Part II

2) then we all join sets: a few people in each set to review and plan progress on

real challenge back home; others to practice core skills of support and challenge 3) tonight, think of a real problem / issue . . .

After break: keep 1 eye on topic, 1 eye on process

Part I contd: Concept and Method

• Two core skill sets in action learning

• When we do use each, especially in the set ?

• Criteria for their use

Range of Core Skills

- Poses fresh question - Suggests / guides

- Provides feedback- Turns questions back

- Offers space - Listens ‘actively’

Provides / gives new information to the other for problem solving / action – adds ‘outer’ authority

Validates / draws out information is in the other for solving problem / im- proving performance – builds ‘inner’ capacity

ChallengingSupportive

‘Who Names What we Talk About ?’

Querying Suggesting /guiding Giving feedback

ChallengingSupportive

Range of skills available to me

Space / silenceActive listeningReflective questions

I make space for other to select / stay with what we discuss ‘I’m pulling out’

I offer direction to the conversation; I select what we might discuss – ‘I’m pushing towards’

SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES OF ACTIVE LISTENING

Listening ‘actively’

Supportive

Range of skills available to me

witn

essin

g

em

path

isin

g

test

ing

for

unde

r

stan

ding

s

umm

arisi

ng

st

ruct

urin

g

“We begin by saying that nobody should tryaction learning unless they are deadly serious about the need for getting out of some present mess . . . Indeed, it has been observed that, unless the participants are actually under some penalty for failure – as distinct from a rewardfor success – they are not always likely to be as honest and straightforward about their motivations and their hang-ups as theircolleagues have a right to expect. . . . [For] action learning sets are tough.”

Reg Revans, “What is Action Learning?” Journal of Management Development, I, 3, 1982

“‘This is suffering – this have I declared’; is the first principle of action learning that men learn only most readily when faced with trouble, or suffering, from which they wish, for reasons known best to them- selves, to escape. There is nothing like the threat of trouble to promote thought, even although the re- sponse is confused, ineffective or dangerous. . . . Un- less people are sick, hurt, embarrassed or otherwise in difficulty, they tend not to question their existing condition. . . . Hence the identification of suffering as an opening condition of change or improvement by Buddhism and by action learning theory alike.”

Revans, “The Immemorial Precursor: Action Learning Past & Present” The Origins and Growth of Action Learning (Chartwell-Bratt Ltd, Bromley), 1982, pp 529-545

Anxiety as the Characteristic Quality of a Hospital . . .

“Hospitals are institutions cradled in anxiety. Patients are anxious . . . Junior nurses are anxious . . . often tormented by the fear . . . Sisters are often anxious . . . charged with frequent emotional crises . . . Consultants . . . are often at heart anxious . . . principal officers of hospitals are uneasy . . . All this is evidence of an ever-present uncertainty.”

Revans, “Operational Research and Hospital Administration,” in Origins and Growth of Action Learning, 1982, pp 250-271

CHARACTERISTICS OF BEING A MANAGER

1. Idolisation of past experience

2. Charismatic influence of other managers seen as being successful

3. Drive towards immediate activity: ‘Do it now!’

4. The need for others to know their place and the need to keep them in their place

Personal development: self regulation and esteem

• “Set meetings also really shaped how I deal with relationships and others.Researcher: Can you give an example?That this programme forces reflection, sometimes to uncomfortable degrees. For example, I reviewed [in the set] a conflict with a very senior person. It was very helpful: I might have blown it. The set offered a voice of reason, against my voice of passion (VI,4).

• It may take a year and a dozen set meetings in JULIP before a professional can trust owning outright what the problem might be: that a part of it may be a part of him:“It’s only the last two or three set meetings I have begun to feel comfortable in sharing real issues bothering me at work, and put these on the table. Offloading: ‘This is about me.’ Because I am proud that’s been hard . . . [But] I could carry it back to the set. It was a place you felt safe.”

Personal Development: “how confident we are feeling”

• We then moved to a lot more depth and honesty: ‘This is what I want to talk about.’ Not ‘what we ought to be talking about’ (VI,2). The group has also been there in some tough times. One or two moments when there has been a strong challenge, for example, when [name of colleague in set] said to me, ‘Are you running away . . .?’ (V,1).

• “to say what needs saying” (I,2)? . . . we have all become more open to the idea of exploring issues with other people, and in particular with people not directly involved in that immediate area of work. In fact, feedback would suggest that we all now actively encourage and even organise this outside of our JULIP set.

Egs of Social Problem Solving: Enhanced Organisational Impact

• the harder-to-measure, softer elements of change management that win hearts and minds:“. . . employers [concerned with hard indicators, targets, etc] . . . need to hear stories about soft issues. They fix on the speed of change and level of monitoring improvement . . . But it [JULIP] is about investing in things underlying the hard measures.”These professionals are being helped to address both task and people in driving change. The analysis has depicted the joining up of action meeting twin requirements in interorganisational partnership, of interdependence – “Getting right the imperative of customer service” – and of trust – “with good staff relationships” (IV,5).

Egs of Challenge

• Successful experience of taking risks and dealing openly with each other in the set appears associated with renewed will outside the set in joint working to constructively confront others: “[In work] I am willing [now] to ask the questions and make the challenges. And sitting at PCT level with grassroots perspectives, I’m quite willing to challenge and ask what this really means for the patient. Perhaps I wouldn’t have before.”

Egs of Support

• The process underlying this learning seems to endorse both the rational and the emotional. Experts who know change leadership, people whose jobs are to profess P in how we can change our organisations, advocate a seamless method of “Speaking to people’s feelings . . . not just thoughts” in order to go “deeper than the conscious and analytic part of our brains” (Kotter and Cohen, 2002, pp x and 182). Is action learning reaching the part of the brain that taught coursework doesn’t? Can set meetings orchestrate limbic resonance – that “symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation” through which today’s interorganisational professionals “become attuned to each other’s inner states” (Lewis et al, 2001, p 63)?

• Some sets in JULIP seem to offer scope for learning these kinds of significant change-management skills by creating a space where professional development and personal growth combine seamlessly. The assimilation of appreciative tolerance for proceeding interdependently and of empathic discipline for acting trustworthily appears nurtured through joined up action learning and researching. A connection is implied between successful experience “in the set [where] you can really concentrate on and challenge in depth somebody’s issue” (I,3) and confidence outside the set – first to trust the process of “really question[ing] what you are doing” (VII,5), and secondly to trust others to lead a similarly powerful process of raising “What questions do we need to be answering?”

Familiar Unfamiliar

Familiar

1 quality circles

3 National Coal Board

Unfamiliar

2 Hospital Internal Communications project

4 Belgium project

PR OBLEM

S E T T I N G