Meetings that work !

I was lucky to be able to deliver the first public workshop on Action Learning in Vietnam last week. At the end of the session, all participants confirmed they really saw the value of the approach and they would apply it in their organizations. As a facilitator, it feels good to get this kind of feedback but I am also aware that very often, reality (with deadlines, emails, presentations to do ...) sucks us up very quickly.

So I was really excited to receive an email from one of the participants of the Vietnam branch of a global FMCG company sharing his very first - and innovative - application of the principles of Action Learning !

His sales team had scheduled the annual Joint Business Meeting with a key customer the day after the workshop. In the past, this Business Meeting was a full day of Powerpoints where each team shared their views, their objectives, results and challenges. And the hours were spent in discussing, explaining, debating, resulting in some agreements and some disagreements. Pretty much a long day for everybody involved, with hours of time spent up front to create the Powerpoint slides.

So my participant, in charge of the sales team for the global FMCG in Vietnam, decided to try and apply the principles of Action Learning in this annual Joint Business Meeting. Out with the laptops, and out with the Powerpoints. The sales manager adapted the standard WIAL Action Learning script to fit his need for this meeting, maintaining the core ground rule of "Statements are only made in response to questions". Participants asked questions to one another to dive into the challenges their respective businesses were facing. Quite a difference from stating your point and trying to convince the other side yours is the right view. Both teams followed the Action Learning approach and achieved a high level of consensus on the key challenges they faced. At the end of the meeting, next steps were jointly identified to work towards and solve the challenges. Participants rated the session 8.5 out of 10 !

Next step: do the same with 2 other major customer teams.

Now that's what I call Action Learning ... in action !