ActionRTS can provide certified Action Learning coaches for problem solving teams, and experienced organizational development consultants to help your senior leadership teams design powerful and successful in-house programs. This is the fastest, most effective way to create a true “learning organization.”

Examples of projects for which we have used Action Learning:

• Developing leadership competencies in GS13 and GS14 level federal employees as part of an Executive Development program

• Enhancing leadership skills and organization-wide perspective for top level sales and marketing professionals at Microsoft

• Creating solutions for the professional development challenges created by an organizational restructuring.

• Framing and addressing the identity, marketing strategy and capability mix challenges inherent in carving out a new niche in the organizational research and consulting arena.

• Designing and implementing a telework program capable of serving the best interests of participants, non-participants, and customers.

Action Learning is unique in its ability to foster systems level thinking, critical inquiry, honest self-reflection, and a supportive and developmental climate in problem solving teams. In groups of 4 to 7 people, plus a coach, participants solicit diverse perspectives on the problem, challenge each others’ assumptions, stimulate each others’ creativity, and ultimately come to a better understanding of their own thought processes, interaction patterns, and implicit mental models.

We hope you will let us help YOU benefit from both the innovative solutions Action Learning teams produce, and the skills and insights participants acquire in the process.

1. A Problem (project, challenge, opportunity, issue or task). The problem should be urgent and significant and should be the responsibility of the team to resolve.

2. An Action Learning group or team. Ideally composed of 4-8 people who examine an organizational problem that has no easily identifiable solution. The group should be diverse in background and experience.

3. A process of insightful questioning and reflective listening. Action Learning tackles problems through a process of first asking questions to clarify the exact nature of the problem, reflecting and identifying possible solutions, and only then taking action. Questions build group dialogue and cohesiveness, generate innovative and systems thinking, and enhance learning results.

4. An action taken on the problem. There is no real meaningful or practical learning until action is taken and reflected on. Action Learning requires that the group be able to take action on the problem it is addressing. If the group makes recommendations only, it loses its energy, creativity and commitment.

5. A commitment to learning. Solving an organizational problem provides immediate, short-term benefits to the company. The greater, longer-term multiplier benefits, however, are the learnings gained by each group member and the group as a whole, as well as how those learnings are applied on a systems-wide basis throughout the organization.

6. An Action Learning Coach. The Action Learning coach helps the team members reflect on both what they are learning and how they are solving problems. The coach enables group members to reflect on how they listen, how they may have reframed the problem, how they give each other feedback, how they are planning and working, and what assumptions may be shaping their beliefs and actions. The Action Leaning coach also helps the team focus on what they are achieving, what they are finding difficult, what processes they are employing, and the implications of these processes.

What Benefits are Derived from Action Learning?

Action Learning benefits the organization as a whole and its members individually and in teams.

Action Learning can:

• Assist succession planning by developing highly qualified candidates for executive leadership positions.
• Deepen participants' confidence in their leadership and team participation skills.
• Enable participants to establish effective, mutually respectful working relationships at all organizational levels.
• Develop competence among individuals and teams in problem-solving and decision-making processes.
• Relate action research/action learning theory and methods to organizational challenges.
• Enhance participants' capacity to reflect on and learn from their individual and collective experiences.
• Develop in participants an awareness of how their implicit assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, preferences, and organizational interests influence their thinking, decisions and actions.
• Increase competence in preparing and presenting recommendations concerning urgent organizational issues to executive management.