IMC

Historical Insights for Associates

This is not a typical pattern for learning of course. It is not the one most Associates will have experienced previously in their educational lives. Normally a wise and learned professor will share what s/he knows with a class of students and eventually examine, often in a proctored 3 hour session, what can be recalled and how it can be crafted in response to carefully selected questions.

The problem with such a 'legacy' or traditional approach is that the curriculum is dictated by one who is never going to face the challenges of management that confront the student. This means that all too many managers who readily accept that they have a 'need' improvement in their roles ( who doesn't?) decline to join the programmes in the first place or are alienated when they do. All too often the acquisition of a credential, such as an MBA, becomes simply an end in itself, a way to get into consultancy or a new job opportunity. But the action learning approach at IMCA is absolutely different.

The credential is something to be proud of course. But an IMCA MBA, or Bachelor or Doctoral award means that real issues and challenges of the individual concerned have been shared, intellectualised, tackled in action, reflected upon and generalised from. The reinforcement of this experience is with the manager concerned for life.

Why the Founding Faculty Quit Traditional Business Schools

The founding faculty team of IMCA came from traditional/ legacy university Business Schools. Almost all of them had gone into those careers from early industrial experiences in, for example, gold mining, industrial statistics, advertising and marketing research, social economics, local government, battery manufacturing, car fleet management and management consultancy. They had taught for a decade in the new British and Australian Schools of Business and evaluated the results of feedback from participants on their courses. The overwhelming evidence was:

Managers have different learning styles from university academics; and
They learnt more in the bar than the classroom.

Which meant quite clearly (i) that to be effective Faculty had to teach to the customers' learning styles not their own or they would not connect, and (ii) that the essence of what was taking place in the bar was of inestimable value and must be captured and nurtured.

Quite simply a different sort of Business School was needed. It must be focused on customers' needs and wants and use learning approaches that empathised with those customers. And as circumstances would have it, Reg Revans the inspirational founder of action learning had been saying this very thing ( in different words ) for some 40 years or more but without gaining too much of an audience.

And again as circumstances would have it, the founding faculty team had been working together since the 1960s in a major academic publishing initiative known as MCB University Press. It did not produce action learning articles; rather it published additions to the body of knowledge by wise faculty members from around the globe. But it had kept the spirit of action alive and flourishing with the founding faculty after they entered the traditional/ legacy schools and afforded the resources to take an independent stand. If a new School was needed, let's do it. IMCA was born with the support of Dupont and Bowater in Hertfordshire, Dow Corning in Brussels and NatWest Bank in Oxfordshire. Each of these great enterprises pledged to place managers on action learning programmes and economic lift-off was assured.

Economic Sustainability

The only funding IMCA has comes from the fees Associates pay, per se and after graduation as voting members. Because the constitution that was adopted insisted IMCA was to be owned by its Faculty and its Graduates, in a Limited by Guarantee corporate framework, paying an annual subscription.

Every initiative, every development, the massive investment in the Internet and global Congregations and the induction of every Faculty member around the globe - all is met by fees payable by Associates and Members. In this manner IMCA was convinced that the curriculum would truly and for ever belong to those who wished to action learn together. And all other processes of learning was eschewed. When in 1999 we finally incorporated our own USA Washington DC accredited university, Revans University, it took as its sub-title The University of Action Learning.

Yes there are Action Learning Designs, but the Associate Calls the Shots

All new Associates tend to find the open nature of the curriculum somewhat scary initially. Surely the faculty know what they want them to learn? Well yes, the Faculty do, but they do not know the reality of each Associate's workplace that the action learning approach requires they become aware of. They cannot know as much as the assembled managers in any given Set about how to manage in the round, even if they have very considerable focused expertise. To be effective they are mandated to ensure that that bar conversation takes place and is nurtured. They are mandated to ensure that the learning styles preferred by practising managers are employed throughout. And finally they are mandated to ensure that the investment of time and money in such action learning generates a real return.

To gain a degree every Associate must reach the levels of competence, skill and understanding required in any traditional/ legacy institution. For a doctorate the Associate must add to the body of knowledge. But the style and manner of doing it is almost entirely open to the Associate to propose. It may be a dozen partially structured real work issues; it may be a dozen action learning questions; it may be a dissertation or thesis; its may be an explication of past writing, learning and experiences. It will always be externally assessed and benchmarked outwith IMCA to ensure the outputs and outcomes are worthy and comparable.

Dead Cases or Textbook Learning Compared with Action Learning Questions

Many Associates will be familiar with the excellent case method pioneered a century ago by Harvard and almost unchanged to this day; and they will know the textbook learning approach. As action learners the contrasting questions you take as your assignments could be:

For Bachelors: how intraprenneurial is the organisation you work for? Could it be more or less so with benefit? What have you learned from your experience of first line management/ supervision in the workplace and what do you see as you major weaknesses? What can you do to confront and overcome them?
For Masters: what are the interface relationships between your specialist area of the business and other specialists? Which do you get on well with and which less so? Why is that? Which are your major competitors? What makes them successful?
For Doctors: what did you study on your Masters' degree? Which has been most useful and why? How can we make sure that your doctoral degree improves upon that usefulness?

Clearly such questions, which only touch the surface of what an Associate will explore, are intriguing and, yes, scary. Each one of us has to come to terms with who we are and what we need to do about that to be more effective! But the strength of the action learning Set is that everyone else is wrestling with the same ghosts. We are what Reg Revans termed: Comrades in Adversity. The true success, which almost all Sets perceive and embrace, is to help one another to help oneself. That makes a team, and although an individual cannot be perfect teams can be and action learning teams are again and again.

[Finally, if you have not already looked at Krystyna Weinstein's excellent descriptive and analytical Fellowship study of the experiences of Associates on action learning programmes - part1, part 2, part 3 & part 4.]