Learning to share learning: An exploration of methods to improve and share learning

Links

UK Commission for Health Improvement (CHI): patient and public involvement

Full report (PDF 42 pages, 256 KB)

Key points

The UK Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) in March 2003 asked Exchange to provide a literature review as part of its activities to share learning from patient and public involvement. A key aim of CHI’s approach is to encourage this learning to be embedded within NHS organisations to help them improve their practice.

The report draws on studies in the fields of education, psychology, organisational learning, personal learning, and participatory approaches to explore understanding of good learning practice. It includes more than 15 case studies that illustrate methodologies and approaches used to share learning in the business, public, and voluntary sectors, paying particular attention to the types of processes that encourage engagement with diverse communities of interest or multiple stakeholders.

Critical issues that are explored in the report include:

• the types of systems that encourage, support and reward learning
• the need to listen, to adapt and to revise plans in the light of learning
• the readiness to take risks, to make mistakes, to ask for help
• the commitment of time, space and resources to learning and sharing of learning
• the need to focus on how people learn best and how they can most easily share the understandings and learning that comes from experience and practice
• the role of technology in supporting learning processes when used wisely.

Although there are many examples given in the report of the way in which particular techniques have been used to encourage sharing of learning, it would be wrong to assume that it is a straightforward process. One of the key issues to consider in any attempt to share learning is the question of control and power within the organisation.

Effective learning can challenge existing control functions and power dynamics in an organisation. At Xerox (and many ther companies), experience has shown that in order to encourage innovation, creativity and the sharing of learning, official business procedures need to be kept minimal to allow space for local innovations and interpretations. This is the way in which people in the organisation are most able to find real, practical and workable solutions to the problems they face.

‘The most valuable knowledge often resides where we are least able to see or control it: on the front lines, at the periphery, with the renegades. Companies that embrace the emergent can tap the logic of knowledge work and the spirit of community. Those that don’t will be left behind.’

Peter Senge, author of one of the most important books on organisational learning - The Fifth Discipline - makes the point that he has

'never seen a successful organisational-learning program rolled out from the top. Not a single one … Just as nothing in nature starts big, so the way to start creating change is with a pilot group - a growth seed. As you think about a pilot group, there are certain choices that you have to make in order to make the group work. The first choice goes back to the issue of compliance versus commitment: Will the change effort be driven by authority or by learning?’

Within the NHS, there are examples of learning processes – often informal – that are emerging at the periphery in response to local needs. These can form the basis of growing and developing learning processes that will build on existing strengths and resources, that will recognise and reward creativity and innovation, and will stimulate others to emulate these process and find their own approaches that will enable them to more effectively engage with the stakeholders in the health service.

Learning involves a process of change, some of it unpredictable. Learning is never a linear process. It is a complex process and although there are many tools and techniques that can help it, effective learning transforms the individuals involved, the organisations involved and the stakeholders with whom they interact.

The report is not a guide to what will work every time to encourage learning. Nor is it a guide to a set of tricks and techniques for disseminating or sharing learning. The tools for doing that best emerge out of a process of learning. Indeed, a process of learning that focuses on strengthening the opportunities for people to exchange views, to dialogue about their strengths and their understanding, to explore together what they know and what they wish to learn is already creating powerful mechanisms for sharing learning.

However sharing of learning is approached, ongoing dialogue needs to be supported, and particular tools or techniques are no short cut to the time and investment that this requires. There are resource implications that cannot be ignored, and commitments that have to be made if genuine learning is to be supported.

Full report (PDF 42 pages, 256 KB)