Mangers’ working environments consist of problems and opportunities for which they must find solutions and for most managers the motivation to learn is greatest when faced with seemingly intractable situations.  Action learning argues that managers learn best by using the real problems of their work as opportunities for learning.

While it is easy to get an experienced manager to accept this view, it is difficult to get them to understand what they have to do, to actually learn about themselves, their jobs, their organisation and its management processes.  One of the several techniques we use to help this process of learning from their daily experiences is to encourage students to record these learning experiences in a logbook.  In writing the experience down students are encouraged to reflect on the experience and to identify the elements of behaviour, which contributed to the experience.  In this way the logbook can help structure personal learning and provide a structural means of charting individual development.

In addition, we encourage the students to use the logbooks to document precisely how they have gained a particular competence and to present evidence for assessment purposes.  The logbook, therefore, contains a portfolio of evidence that the students have removed a selected number of incompetencies and, through their newly acquired skills of life-long learning, are involved in a continuous learning process.