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Whole Scale Process: Action Learning Model


The Action Learning Model serves as a general architecture for an overall Whole-Scale change process.  Within a change process, the organization may go through many iterations of the learning cycle.

“There can be no learning without action and no (sober and deliberate) action without learning”- Reg Raven. According to him, L= P+Q where L is learning, P is traditional instructions or Programmed Knowledge referred as Puzzles and Q is critical reflection or Questioning Insights referred to as Problems.  Reg Raven’s action learning cycle starts from action-> learning from experience of actions-> Reflect and question oneself-> revised idea/reframing of new actions.

The Action Learning Model pictures how we see incremental emergence of wholeness using the Whole-Scale approach. Based on Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Model, the model is an application of systems thinking and action learning aimed at keeping the system whole at every step of the process. Drawing parallels to the Kurt Lewin’s model, when microcosms or the sets are placed in unfamiliar settings working on unfamiliar problems, fresh questions are introduced. When the microcosm starts asking questions, they start unfreezing their underlying assumptions. When they change the texture of their assumptions, they began to create new mental models. Combination of new mental models and shift in underlying assumptions give rise to reassessment of programmed knowledge. We reject the old programmed knowledge (P) and replace it with new one. Hence, learning capacities and performance levels increase with renewal of questioning insights (Q).

When a critical mass of the microcosms has gone through the Action Learning Model on the right issues, the whole system will change because it has in fact become an organization with a new paradigm, an organization that has a whole new picture of what it wants to be. This magical moment when the paradigm shift occurs as becoming “one brain and one heart.” Everyone in the organization sees the same things and cares passionately about creating this new picture. They start transforming their shared visions to shared reality. This is how Action learning brings in a whole scale change.

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