What are the four dimensions of change learning ?
I often find it helpful to undertake a learning needs assessment. It can often save a lot of time, money and grief later. Nomatter what the context, active learning should have a clear purpose, something you are hoping to achieve. Clarifying the resources that may be needed and the barriers to be faced can inject a sense of realism. Maybe it has been tried before, or maybe the benefits do not justify the costs involved.

The dynamic model presented here deals with four dimensions covering the whole field of learning, each one held in dynamic balance. Firstly, learning involves an interaction between the learner and their environment (outside-in), and connections made by the learner's new knowledge to their prior learning (inside-out). They are both influenced by the type of social interactions (bottom-up) and the purpose of the learning (top-own).

Here again, the four dimensions of change reflect the way change learning can be organised and balanced to maximise its impact. For example, change learning must serve the best interests of the organisation (top-down) that is paying for the space, time and resources to support the learning. Yet we know that organisational learning is only effective when it is aligned with the personal aims and emotional needs of stakeholders (outside-in) and the organisation's members - be they working as individuals (inside-out) or in groups (bottom-up).

Top-Down - Organisational Change Learning
Organisations are collections of individuals who interact to develop and store knowledge that's meaningful to them, and enables them to do their work effectively. Learning mechanisms allow new information and new skills to be developed and thereby increase the capability of people to get better at being better.

Of interest to those at the top of the organisation is not what employees know, as how well and how quickly they can use what they know to achieve the organisation's objectives. It's about activation or energy.

"Organisations learn through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organisational learning. But without it no organisational learning occurs."
Peter Senge in 'The Fifth Discipline'.

Much has been written on how best to organise learning to serve the best interests of the organisation, but this is one dimensional thinking and invariably fails as a result. As you may know from personal experience, most improvement programmes fail to reach their objectives. The key factor sems to be the extent to which the desired behaviour changes were seen to be meaningful to the people involved and were valued by them.

If feedback is not appreciated or respected and mistakes or incompetence are punished, it is unlikely that change will be seen as meaningful or valued. Meaning comes from the way those at the top of the organisation behave, not what they say. For example, if they talk openness and are not accessible they lose credibility and trust is lost.

The message for real change leaders at the top of organisations is to create the conditions that support the open and honest exchange of meaningful information. Some organisations support Communities of Practice to achieve this.

"Valuable achievement can sprout from human society only
when it is sufficiently loosened to make possible the
free development of an individual's abilities."
Albert Einstein.

Bottom-Up - Team Change Learning

External events are happening all the time (outside-in) so the ability to manage change is a vital skill. The tension is caused by how much of that change we decide to respond to (inside-out). As you will see below, system change is driven from the outside-in, but changing the system has to come from the inside-out. For example, the purpose of a teacher is to help create a learning society.

"The key to learning is the teacher who must combine continuous inner and outer learning .... they are in a privileged osition to pursue the meaning of life through the merging of microcsm and macrocosm"
Michael Fullen in 'Change Forces'

What society needs are citizens who can think for themselves and present ideas on the one hand, and work with others on the other. However, the energy for social learning comes from the bottom-up, from the capacity of interacting individuals to learn in groups. Indeed, increasing the capacity and speed of individual learning through social interaction has a major impact on the pace of learning and therefore change. This means learning from every meaningful encounter.

We learn with and through others. What we choose to learn can depend on the groups and communities we choose to join. The strongest knowing comes from doing, especially when it is reinforced through participation with other learners. It's empowering and can be inspiring.

I have used Learning Labs and Action Reviews to improve the creation of new knowledge, ideas and solutions. The learning is embedded in a context that is meaningful to all and thereby improves the quality of people's reasoning and intuition. As well as developing the skills of collaborative working, team learning seems to have a positive effect on people's motivation, self-esteem and enjoyment.

Communities of Practice are another approach for fostering bottom-up learning. This approach reflects the force of connecting with others to promote learning. By using ths approach learning can happen despite the constrants placed on people engage in their organisation.

"If values and institutions no longer provide as supportive a framework as they once did, each person must use whatever tools are available to carve out a meaningful, enjoyable life."
Csikszentmihalyi in 'Flow'

Outside-In - Community Change Learning

As global communications develop we increasingly look outside ourselves for answers. Most of what can be thought of as 'outside-in' learning results from observation more than mental activity. For example, learning from service users and stakeholders through empathetic observation and honest conversation is only meaningful if the individual responds by changing their behaviour. When you have listened and improved, service users look for evidence that the things that are of concern to them have changed.

Asking questions to explore the 'what' and' why' of stakeholder needs and preferences is crucial outside-in learning. If leaders are learning from those looking from the outside-in, then everyone else will. This is a key behaviour for Real Change Leaders that is addressed in the change leadership section.

The outside-in perspective encourages systems thinking, because you are exploring connections with the bigger system of which you are a part. This outside-in learning needs to be integrated with your inside-out personal learning. Dealing with the tensions in this horizontal change dynamic increases your knowledge and capability for real change. Learning it seems is governed by the bigger system of which it is a part, but becomes meaningful through local interactions driven by the bottom-up dimension.

Inside-Out - Individual Change Learning

There seems to be a strong consensus that change is an outcome as well as a process, which starts within ourselves. Unless we shift our thinking or open our minds we will not 'see' the need for change. If we cannot imagine a change we cannot make it happen. Individuals have to incorporate new facts into existing mental models.

The rise of the individual or Personal Learning, linked to Action Learning strategies has demonstrated that accelerated learning is possible. It's about linking learning with real life experience, reflecting on the actions, feelings and knowledge that actually made the difference in a given context.

To be a Real Change Leader you must:

xxxxxxxxxx set goals or have a clear intention
xxxxxxxxxx become immersed in an activity for to know is to do
xxxxxxxxxx pay attention to your intention and what's happening now
xxxxxxxxxx enjoy the immediate experience and/or learn from it

Leaders in the field of change learning, such as Sheila Harri-Augstein and Ian Webb, show that learning is a social and voluntary activity (bottom-up) that flourishes when the environment (outside-in) and mindset (inside-out) are validated (top-down). Change learning is dynamically complex

At the core of the bottom-up approach is the ability to engage in Learning Conversations. A number of tools exist to foster learning conversations from the bottom-up, including Open Space Technology, Learning Teams, and Action Learning Sets.

Self-Organised Learning too supports learning conversations between independent learners and their personal learning coach or mentor. The learner is encouraged to take responsibility for their own thoughts, choices, feelings and actions. An organisation made up of people who work together as active learners can participate proactively in change.

Accelerated learning is the engine of real change. Real Change Leaders tend to achieve it by focusing others on:

anticipating future needs - What opportunities are available ?
inventing strategies for dealing with unexpected events
new and creative ways of looking at the world
new ways of competing
delivering total quality and total leadership
removing old rules and regimes that are clearly not working
creating alternative futures with sustainability in mind

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