The need for action learning

Business Sculptors believes that we learn most effectively when our "lessons" are divided into small chunks, spread over time and rehearsed in "real-time". We believe that "brain-friendly" learning should include a mixture of reading, exploring, imagining, creating and learning to ensure resilience, endurance and mental fitness.

Our action-learning journey is influenced by our lecturing experience at the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch Business Schools, research on the shortcomings of MBA and executive programmes, as well as research on how our brain works.

The action-learning journey

The action-learning journey is a training programme for leaders, which we have designed together with these leaders and their companies. This ensures that the learning journey helps leaders to develop the knowledge and skills that they and their companies actually need. Leaders that put more effort into this journey will get more out of this journey.

As part of this journey, leaders each design a business project of significant magnitude, which has been endorsed by their line managers and fits with their companies' strategies.

What do leaders and their companies get from this journey?

By the end of their learning journey, we expect the leaders to have achieved the following:

• Overcome some of the constraints that were preventing them from being successful, and gained new knowledge, skills and insights.
• Conducted a business project approved by their line managers, which would have benefited their companies directly.
• Involved their team in discussions and workshops (where appropriate), and transferred much of what they have learned to their team members.
• Reported on what they have learned from the project and what still needs to be done to make their projects successful.
• Attended a series of workshops that would have provided them with the knowledge and skills they need to make their project successful, and help their companies once they have completed this learning journey.
  
• Done substantial reading and research.
• Received coaching and mentoring support from our team.