Marilyn Herasymowych

In the preface to their action learning guide ‘Solving Real Problems in Real Time’ Marilyn Herasymowych and Henry Senko endorse GULL’s philosophy and approach to action learning with a powerful rationale for learning at the speed of change: “It is an understatement to say that organizations are experiencing more change than ever before. In fact, most of us are finally getting used to the idea that constant change is a part of living and working within organizations. What is less understood is how to work within the uncertainty, instability, confusion, and loss of control that accelerating change creates.

To deal with the conditions that change creates, we use all of the skills, knowledge and experience that we have at our disposal. However, when we try to fix problems, we can make them worse than they were in the first place. Then, we ask ourselves questions to try to make sense of the resulting confusion: “What is going on? What are we doing wrong? Why can’t we make things better? Why do our fixes not work?” Common answers to these questions are even less helpful: “It’s their fault! We didn’t get any help! We should have known what to do!”

The reason that we fail to solve these complex problems has little to do with being smart enough to deal with accelerating change. It has more to do with not being smart in a way that works when the degree of complexity is so high. Nothing that we have learned in the past has prepared us to deal with increasing complexity and the change that it creates. Unless we think and act differently, we will continue to struggle with problems we cannot seem to solve.

If we are to match the speed of change, or, perhaps, to slow it down and to change its direction, we need a completely different approach to dealing with complexity. Action learning is such an approach – a way of thinking and acting that enables us to solve real problems in real time, and to create the resilience required to deal with complexity and change.”