Action learning has been as a key training and problem-solving tool for companies as diverse as Microsoft, Siemens, Caterpillar, NASA, Singapore Polytechnic, Nokia, Motorola, Marriott, General Motors, Deutsche Bank and British Airways. Hundreds of companies around the world now employ Action Learning for strategic planning, developing managers and leaders, identifying competitive advantages, reducing operating costs, creating high-performing teams and becoming learning organizations.
What exactly is Action Learning? Simply described, Action Learning is a dynamic process that involves a small group of people solving real problems, while at the same time learning from the process.
Action Learning also reveals what is the most pressing problem of the employee. Lack of productivity seems to be one of the biggest problems in Myanmar. Employees complain that their personal life suffers from overtime, yet managers see unsolved problems piling up on their desks.
Unproductivity is however just a symptom of more serious problems in management. Neglecting these problems leads to high turnover, financial loss or worse - bankruptcy.
From my 4 years of experience in training Executive Assistants, lecturing MBA students and coaching Managers in Action Learning in Myanmar, there are three major factors of unproductivity: vague communication, asking closed questions, and talking instead of listening.
The solution to most of the problems is in understanding what the problem really is. When we present a problem in more than a minute, most probably we need to clarify what the problem really is. We talk more in hope to be better understood, but it only makes people more confused. They leave your office or meeting exhausted and don’t dare asking more questions. We don’t understand what the real problem is, hence we work without conviction. Getting to the core of the problem may take up to 30 minutes in an Action Learning session, but may save months of unproductive work on problems that don’t even exist.
Another source of unproductive behavior at work is asking closed questions or suggesting an answer to our employee. A closed question requires only two options: yes or now. It doesn’t give the employee an opportunity to tell us more about the situation and prevent some problems before they even occur. Instead of asking: “Could you please organise it for tomorrow?”, a much more effective question would be: “How can we make it happen tomorrow?”. This question gives the employee an opportunity to make a quick SWOT analysis before they accept the task and talk it through to see what is important. We feel more confident about the possibility of making it happen, instead of spending hours thinking what exactly needs to be done and how impossible it actually is. Open questions help visualizing the process of realisation and reduce the time spent on employees complains and fear, hence unproductive beghaviour.
And last, but not least we don’t understand from the first time. In order to be productive and work on the real problem or task, we need to “renegotiate the meaning” of certain words, make sure we understand each other and clarify everything with questions. Asking a question and deep listening is the key. “How do you understand what I said?” question seems trivial, but it is crucial for productivity.
