Action Learning: Integrating Work and Learning

The Big Picture

Learning in the workplace has value only if it has value.

Learning that has value is anchored in producing peak performance that contributes to goal attainment, which in turn contributes to realizing strategic intent. Peak performance delivers value streams that create great patient experience, drive engagement and satisfaction for people, and generate organizational resources for the present and the future.

Action Learning: The Integration of Work and Learning

The Business Review and Workplace Goals and Measures create the context and rationale for assembling Systems Thinking Action Learning Teams. The three elements are:

• Systems Thinking
• Action
• Learning

Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking is, literally, a way of thinking. It is not a method, a tool, or a model. Systems Thinking draws peoples attention to:

• Purpose - why things happen in the first place
• Interdependency - how multiple parts of an organization interact with each other
• Behavior Over Time - a longitudinal perspective on the ebb and flow of the organization
• Root Cause - thinking that goes deep and wide

Systems Thinking leads people to solve problems and create future possibilities in the largest system to which they have access. This in turn encourages people to create linkages across the organization, and to think in terms of solving systems of problems rather than each one taken separately in its own limited context.

Action

The focus of Action Learning Teams never leaves the continuum of Strategy > Goals > Performance > Results. Learning is not abstract. It occurs through action. Learning is constantly tested through action; it is the action itself that reveals the practical and pragmatic adjustments to learfning that will ultimately realize the performance required to achieve strategic intent.

Learning

In contrast to training that occurs in classrooms in the hope that itfinds its way into the workplace, Action Learning Teams identify learning goals and learning content directly related to the work at hand. While time is made for teams to learn, it generally takes place in the workplace itself, reducing travel time and time away from workplace activity.