Harnessing the Power of Action Learning

By Michael J. Marquardt

From Boston to Brazil, from Finland to Tokyo, companies as diverse as Samsung, Deutsche Bank, GE, and Boeing share one powerful workplace learning tool: they have created thousands of new products and services, improved service quality, cut costs and delivery times, and made fundamental changes to their organizations’ cultures by unleashing the power of action learning.

Action learning has rapidly emerged as the primary tool used by organizations such as Sodexho, Novartis, and Nokia for solving their critical and complex problems while concurrently serving as the key methodology for developing leaders, building teams, and expanding corporate capabilities.

William Welden, Worldwide Chairman, Pharmaceutical Group, proclaims that “action learning has significantly enhanced Johnson & Johnson’s leadership development and has improved our business by developing new and exciting business opportunities.” Robert Krammer, Director of American University’s Executive Program for senior government leaders, declares that “action learning has become the centerpiece and an integral part of all of our public management programs because of its extraordinary capacity to enhance how people manage and lead public service organizations.”

Gerard van Schalk, Chairman of Executive Board at Heineken, notes that “action learning has become the primary vehicle for generating creative ideas and building business success at Heineken.” Larry Wilson, vice president, Human Resources, Dow Chemical, states that action learning is indeed “the best way to align and motivate our organization to create and leverage knowledge for competitive advantage.” And Enju Park of LG Electronics, one of Korea’s largest corporations, writes that “action learning has been the key impetus in improving business performance as well as developing problem solving and global skills for our leaders.”

For these and the thousands of other organizations that have begun to use action learning within the past five years, the great attraction of action learning is its unique and amazing power to simultaneously solve difficult challenges and develop people and organizations at minimal costs to those institutions. This ability and power to intelligently and creatively act and learn at the same time has become essential in a workplace that is rapidly changing and faces ever more unpredictable global challenges. 

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