Action Learning: How the World's Top Companies are Re-Creating Their Leaders and Themselves - Hardcover

Dotlich, David L.; Noel, James L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787903493 ISBN 13: 9780787903497

Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 1998

Synopsis

A Strategic Boot Camp for Leadership Development "David Dotlich has worked with top management of the best companies to deliver Action Learning programs for over fifteen years. His insights into how leaders develop and his experience as a coach and executive are captured in this excellent book." --Arnold Kanarick, executive president and chief human resources officer, The Limited Plug into a dynamic leadership development process custom made for today?s rapidly changing, technology-driven business environment. Unlike traditional classroom-style programs, Action Learning engages managers in emotionally intense, team-oriented experiences that directly address the immediate strategic needs of the organization. Here, authors Dotlich and Noel detail the many Action Learning sessions they?ve conducted at Shell, Ameritech, Citibank, and other leading corporations that have used Action Learning to quickly and successfully implement a variety of tactical and quantum change initiatives. Readers benefit from a clearly defined framework they can use to construct an Action Learning program of their own--a program that gives companies the power to re-create themselves by first re-creating their leaders.

About this title

About the Author

DAVID L. DOTLICH, former executive vice president of Honeywell and Groupe Bull, is an indepAndent consultant and executive coach whose clients include Johnson & Johnson, Nike and Arthur Andersen.

JAMES L. NOEL, is vice president of executive development for Citibank.

From the Back Cover

Plug into a dynamic leadership develop process custom made for today's rapidly changing, technology-driven business environment. Unlike traditional classroom-style programs, Action Learning embroils "students" in emotionally intense, team-oriented experiences that directly address the immediate strategic needs of the organization. Here, authors Dotlich and Noel detail the many Action Learning sessions they've conducted at Shell, Ameritech, Citibank, and other leading corporations that have used Action Learning to quickly and successfully implement a variety of tactical and quantum change initiatives. Readers benefit from a clearly defined framework they can use to construct an Action Learning program of their own--a program that gives companies the power to recreate themselves by first recreating their leaders.

Reviews

This straightforward book begins with the solid premise that the only way that organizations will be able to evolve to meet the challenges of today's business environment is for the people who run them to change as well. Dotlich, a consultant, and Noel, vice-president of human resources at Citicorp, are both clear about how that change should happen through "action learning," their term for learning that takes place in a controlled environment where theory is combined with the knowledge that managers already have. They lay out 12 steps to follow for that learning to occur. At this point the book starts to falter. Instead of giving managers a broad prescription for change, Dotlich and Noel should have provided a how-to action plan to follow, which would have been more useful than the generalizations and anecdotes gleaned from their consulting work and personal experiences. Although they do a good job of setting up the rationale for change, the authors might have gone further in showing us how to effect it.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Simply stated, action learning is learning by doing, and by that definition, it is not anything new. Even as a management training technique, it has been utilized for quite some time. In the training context, action learning involves teams that are assigned to solve a problem; and the process that evolves in finding the solution becomes as important as the solution itself. Dotlich and Noel are both consultants who specialize in planned organizational change, and they have used action learning as a technique for more than a decade. They argue that change cannot happen unless the behavior and attitudes of the leadership of an organization are transformed, and they demonstrate that action learning can effect this so-called re-creation. The authors use examples and exercises to show how to apply the action learning model. They also stress that a 12-element organizational framework must be in place for action learning to work. Elements include sponsorship by a key individual or group within the organization and having a strategic mandate. David Rouse

Edition details

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787903493
• ISBN 13: 9780787903497
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240