Tag: ActionLearning

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Ripe learning opportunities from moments of transition 

Transitions are ripe moments for reflection on action.

When we’re in the flow of delivery, we rarely have the chance to pause and ask what we’re really doing or why. But transitions — a change of job, a shift in funding, or simply the end of a project — give us the opportunity.

Creating change means pushing, pulling or nudging outcomes away from their default path toward an intentional one. But while we’re in the thick of delivery, it’s easy for intentions to get blurred, or dropped altogether.

So when we pop out the other side of a period of work, it’s worth asking: what was I really trying to do, and what actually happened?

  • Here are some questions I use to harvest learning at the end of a project:
  • What did I set out to do? Even if you can’t fully recall, try to write it down.
  • What did I actually do? Not just the deliverables — think about the journey: the conversations, obstacles, and detours.
  • What were the consequences — intended and unintended? In complex systems, surprises are inevitable.
  • What advice would I give someone else setting out on the same journey? You can’t repeat the past, but someone else can build on it.

These lessons are easily lost. Once we move on, the window for reflection closes quickly. So take the time to harvest the fruits of transition while they’re still ripe.

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Pattern book field notes – action learning and continuous place-based design

The Pattern Book for Regenerative Design is propped against a sign saying keep off the grass. In the backdrop is the quad of a Cambridge college

This week I took my copy of the Pattern Book to Cambridge. (Its second visit: in July I dropped it — and my laptop — in a puddle. Both recovered, and this time was less eventful.)

I was there to deliver my annual September workshop for the new cohort of students on the Sustainability Leadership for the Built Environment (SLBE) masters at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Two Pattern Book entries featured strongly.

Continuous place-based design

The workshop was called Design your learning process. We began by asking: what is design? I asked students to sketch a diagram of design as they see it.

This is central to the Constructivist method: start where the learner is, then connect new concepts to what they already know.

After sharing diagrams, I introduced a series of design models, each adding a new dimension, until we reached the Continuous Place-Based Design motif. At each stage, I pointed to overlaps with the students’ diagrams.

The point isn’t to treat any model as a strict procedure, but to use it as something to compare with reality — and then think how we might shift that reality for the better.

Action learning

From there, we turned to the idea that continuous place-based design is really a learning process. Which led naturally to the Action Learning motif.

It’s easy to be passive in learning. The real value comes when we apply theory to practice and then reflect on the results. The Pattern Book entry for action learning even includes a script for running these conversations with colleagues.

This month, I’ve been in workshops on live infrastructure projects where the same theme has surfaced again: organisations struggling to learn from mistakes. Not lessons learned, but lessons lost. For me this underlines that action learning isn’t just a training method — it’s a principle for working in complex systems.

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It is such a pleasure to teach on this course — this is the start of my eighth cohort! Many graduates are readers here, so if that’s you: thank you for sticking with me all these years.