How Action Learning can support transfer of knowledge.

One of the biggest challenges after a training session, is to transfer the lessons learned into day to day working in order to solve day to day problems. At the end of the session we always have those reflection sheets, lessons learned and actions. How frustrated it is to see they are still on the wall after the team has left the room. How to use them to create real value? This artikel is about Action Learning.

Learning is transferring knowledge from one context to another... 

Action learning is about learning from action. The key elements for this are:

• a team of employees who want to learn
• a challenge to be solved (an assignment)
• a facilitator
• a learning process

A team of employees

The team consists of employees who have the ambition and the commitment to work on issues worth to be solved. They are committed to spent time and energy to explore solutions and implement them into day to day work. The team could consist of 5 managers, 6 process managers, 5 project managers etc. Depending on the subject.

A challenge 

There must be something worth solving. Could be a problem could be a goal the team wants to achieve and they don't know how to solve or achieve this. Could be a project or a question.

A facilitator

The team will be facilitated by a learning facilitator. The facilitator will focus on the learning process and will support the team during the session. The learning facilitator is NOT a teacher who knows all the answers.

A learning process

The structure of the session could be based on Kolb. 

The steps during a ALP session (2-4 hours):

1. Explore the outcomes of last week. The actions, the results, new questions.
2. One of the participants (owner) will bring in a problem, questions, issue, challenge or subject he wants to work on. Or the team defines a question or problem they want to solve
3. The team will explore the question by asking, exploring, challenging the 'owner' of the issue or challenging each other.
4. The 'owner' will think about solutions, actions, ideas etc. The team will support the 'owner' by testing the solutions. Or the team will challenge the solution themselves.
5. The 'owner' or team will prepare a concrete actions to take with him to day to day work.

Example of ALP (Action Learning Program) 

After an series of Apollo 13 workshops, the conclusion of the team was to start CSI (Continual Service Improvement) using the CSI-Register. The manager assigned this task to a team of 3 process managers and we started an ALP (4 sessions of 2-3 hours). 

First session (2-3 hours) - The team explored the assignment and created a list of questions:

• What is the theory behind CSI and CSI Register?
• Who should be the owner of this?
• How do we get the whole team on board?
• Which items should we add to this CSI-Register?
• Who decide which actions to take?
• Do we need a tool?

Actions for next week:

1. Team will search on the internet for examples, theory and experiences about CSI.
2. One participants knew an other organisation who has a CSI and will contact this organisation.

Second session - The team presented the answers and started to design their own solution. When the first draft was on the white board, we did an exercise to look at this draft from different stakeholders in the organisation and asked our selfs "what would be the benefit for me?". This exercise gave the team lot's of insights and the team prepared a list of actions which focused on buy-in, communication etc.

Actions for next week:

1. Talk to different stakeholders in the organisation to explore  'whats-in-it-for-me'

Step by step this team prepared the solution. They developed new competences during the ALP which made them solve other issues as well. The implementation was a success. The CSI-Register started as a whiteboard and is now a web based tool used by the whole team.

Last session - we explored the outcomes, the lessons learned, the value of this ALP, the things we can improve and the new issues we can now solve ourselves without this ALP.

 The real learning starts after the training...

Advantages of ALP

1. Learning with motivated people who really want to solve things
2. Short, powerful interventions
3. Focus on items that matters
4. Action oriented 
5. Learning by Doing, developing competences we can reuse.

There is a lot to learn from articles on the internet. So, start your own Action Learning Program if you want to learn more about this..