The Learning River Plan

This management training I undertook at Tower Hamlets Housing Action Trust. It probably explains why I found MAP so soulless which came afterwards. The two people who ran CALL (Centre for Action Learning Ltd) were Jonathan Coates and Claire Breeze. There was a frisson of something between them, no doubt more on his part than hers. He was much older and she was young and voluptuous. He was the one I made a mental connection with. I don’t remember seeing Claire often, but Jonathan asked her opinion or deferred to her in a way I noticed. He was not especially charismatic or particularly good looking and was undergoing treatment for his eyes at the time, but he was the personification of nice and said some supportive things to me at a time when my leadership was again under fire. I think my ‘management wheel’ had two drivers which was less usual and he pointed out that this indicated my flexibility (or something positive) at a time when I was getting trashed by my boss. I met his daughter at one training session who he was obviously devoted to. Anyway, I tried at some later stage to contact him only to be told abruptly that he was dead. It was a big shock. I wanted for some reason to understand more about how he had died and rang back, but was politely given the brush off.

I googled Claire Breeze writing this post and recognised the voluptuous look immediately, confirmed when I saw the picture in this post. http://challengerspirit.relume.co.uk/profiles/blogs/resilience-not-endurance

I love the whole challenger spirit ethos. It takes on the work from CALL. Claire reflects beautifully. Jonathan would be proud and that’s not about him taking any credit. He was not that sort of person. He would be pleased she is still exploring her potential. It also says a lot about her in terms of the talent she has drawn to her.

I digress.

The Learning River Plan argues that the person who could be most influential in the design of management learning plans is you and that a better way of learning about management is to base it on learning from real experiences.

‘The Learning River Plan asks managers to decide

Where am I trying to get to in terms of real achievement?

What are the best ways to get there?

What do I need to learn to get there really well?

The Learning River Plan asks managers to define their

Port of Destination What are you trying to achieve? What will it look like to everyone else when you have got there? What do you need to have done by a certain date?

Current Audit Take stock of where you are now. What new or improved skills or knowledge will you need to get to the port of destination as effectively as possible? If you need to learn nothing new to achieve this, why are you doing it at all? Perhaps your port represents a change. Are you required to do more, better or different?

Programme (P) learning possibilities like courses or packages. Has anyone you know gone through this route before?

Question (Q) learning possibilities Some things have to be learned from experience – even if you go on courses they still have to be put into practice. In order to learn from experience you have to do 2 things. You have to plan to have the experience, or probably several experiences, and then you have to plan a time slot to work out what you have learned.

Identifying helpers (Pilots) and hinderers (Pirates and Crocodiles) Pirates are visible. Crocodiles are not and can be unfriendly, even vicious.