Action Learning - Revans's Formula

Revans's Formula

Professor Reginald Revans is the originator of action learning. Revans formative influences included his experience training as a physicist at the University of Cambridge. In his encounters with this talented group of scientists - several went on to win Nobel-prizes - he noted the importance of each scientist describing their own ignorance, sharing experiences, and communally reflecting to learn. He used these experiences to further develop the method in the 1940s while working for the Coal Board in United Kingdom. Here, he encouraged managers to meet together in small groups, to share their experiences and ask each other questions about what they saw and heard. The approach increased productivity by over 30%. Later in hospitals, he concluded that the conventional instructional methods were largely ineffective.

People had to be aware of their lack of relevant knowledge and be prepared to explore the area of their ignorance with suitable questions and help from other people in similar positions.

Later, Revans made this more precise in the opening chapter of his book (Revans, 1980) which describes the formula:

where L is learning, P is programming and Q is questioning to create insight into what people see, hear or feel.

Q uses :

• "closed" questions:
  • who?
  • what?
• "objective" questions:
  • how much or how many?
• "relative" questions:
  • where
  • when
• "open questions
  • why?
  • how?

Although Q is the cornerstone of the method, the more relaxed formulation has enabled action learning to become widely accepted in many countries all over the world. In Revans' book there are examples from the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific.

Michael Marquardt expanded Revans's formula as follows:

L = P + Q + R

In this expanded equation, R refers to reflection. This additional element emphasizes the point that "great questions" should evoke thoughtful reflections while considering the current problem, the desired goal, designing strategies, developing action or implementation plans, or executing action steps that are components of the implementation plan.