cover image Action Learning: How the World's Top Companies Are Re-Creating Their Leaders and Themselves

Action Learning: How the World's Top Companies Are Re-Creating Their Leaders and Themselves

David Dotlich, James L. Noel, Dotlich. Jossey-Bass, $40 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-7879-0349-7

This straightforward book begins with the solid premise that the only way that organizations will be able to evolve to meet the challenges of today's business environment is for the people who run them to change as well. Dotlich, a consultant, and Noel, vice-president of human resources at Citicorp, are both clear about how that change should happen through ""action learning,"" their term for learning that takes place in a controlled environment where theory is combined with the knowledge that managers already have. They lay out 12 steps to follow for that learning to occur. At this point the book starts to falter. Instead of giving managers a broad prescription for change, Dotlich and Noel should have provided a how-to action plan to follow, which would have been more useful than the generalizations and anecdotes gleaned from their consulting work and personal experiences. Although they do a good job of setting up the rationale for change, the authors might have gone further in showing us how to effect it. (June)