Learning meetings ... ?

I just read an article of one of my favorite authors in the latest issue of HBR. Michael Watkins is a very good resource when you are interested in career transitions and he is pretty much the expert in this little-researched area. In this article however, something caught my eye ... and makes me react.

Watkins explains that as a leader of a team, you should have three types of meetings. Strategic meetings to make the big decisions on business models, vision, strategy or organizational evolutions. Operational meetings to review forecasts, short term performance and adjusting plans. And finally, you should have "learning meetings". These meetings are "scheduled on an as-needed basis, often after crises or in response to emerging issues. They can also focus on team building."

Wow ... what a let-down ! Learning meetings ?!

So let me get this straight. There are meetings where we "do" stuff like operational things and strategy things. These are the doing meetings. And then when we do not do anything, and if we have some time on our hands, we can have a "learning" meeting to think and learn ... I strongly disagree with this view of what learning means and how it should be integrated in the way people work. My other favorite author and thinker - and father of Action Learning - Reg Revans says

"There is no learning without action and there is no action without learning"

and from what I seen in my experience, this is the only way to make learning a continuous and integral part of how to grow a team and a business.

If learning is something that is distinct from the "real" work that is being done ... it means you are relegating it to the back seat. The only way to really learn is to make learning part of every meeting, project, and activity.