This is a book that will be of interest to two groups of people. The first will be those in the learning and development community – especially those involved with the development of managers. The second will be the managers working within an organisation. These managers will generally be the people most often faced with the challenge of solving complex problems. By happy co‐incidence (or maybe not!), the use of action learning could be an ideal tool for both.
Action learning is not easy to define in one sentence, and can take many forms. It is a method in which a small group of people tackle important organisational problems and learn from their experience. They ask their own questions; they share their own thoughts and experiences; they come up with their own solutions. In the context used within this book, the groups devise solutions to problems that are then implemented, and the group members learn from the whole process. And we are not talking about small problems and successes here, hence the term “Breakthrough Problem Solving”.
The two authors of this book, Michael J. Marquardt and Roland K. Yeo, have considerable experience in this field. Michael Marquardt is Professor of Human Resources Development and International Affairs at George Washington University and President of the World Institute for Action Learning. Amongst Roland Yeo's numerous roles, he is a Management Trainer based at the Saudi Aramco Professional Development Academy. Between them, they have delivered a book which both details past success stories with action learning and will, I hope, inspire many more.
The book is set out in three parts. The first defines the territory by examining the complexity of problems facing organisations today. It shows how the problems are much more difficult to solve; problems for which technical expertise is simply not enough for their solution. It also looks at how action learning incorporates principles and best practice from other disciplines to both tackle the problems and to develop the managers in the group. This is the “theory heavy” part of the book. A little too heavy for me, but a very useful academic referencing piece for those wishing to delve further into the topic.
The second part of the book, and by far the largest, contains 31 case studies that demonstrate successful breakthrough problem solving through action learning. The case studies are from organisations large and small, spread across the globe and from different industries or sectors. They cover problems across a broad range of topics, such as sales and marketing, product and services innovation, environment and sustainability, national and community developments and corporate culture and ethics. And they are fairly recent, rather than historic success stories.
Through interviews and analysis, Marquardt and Yeo have teased out from each case the key factors that enabled the breakthroughs to take place.
In the final part of the book the authors draw together the earlier strands, to give us a succinct and extremely useful set of principles and strategies for breakthrough problem solving. They give ten critical principles. In themselves, these principles are not radical. However, the purpose of the book is not to come up with some grand new concept or way of employing action learning. It is to examine what works and set this out in clear terms, with well‐researched empirical evidence to back this up. Each of the ten principles comes with a further set of tips to ensure the best prospect of success, both for solving the organisation's immediate problems and to utilising the process as a development activity for the participants.
In this final part there is an acknowledgement that there can be stumbling blocks in the use of action learning to solve problems. There is a very useful table that shows common challenges for the use of action learning to solve problems. To some extent this balances the very positive message conveyed by the book about the usefulness of action learning, although I personally would have liked to know a little more about this. A few “un‐success stories” may not have gone amiss.
In summary, a book of potentially great value to many organisations. It is a scholarly piece of work, bringing theory and best practice together to give an excellent guide to organisations and individuals who want to use action learning to develop their people for the future and to solve their biggest problems today!
