Action Inquiry

Organisations have been preoccupied for well over 50 years about how managers and leaders learn. The litany of corporate failures and unfulfilled careers is illustrative of what happens when organisations and individuals learn too late.

It is now well understood that developing effectiveness before and after the action of the day is not enough. Organisations need individuals to be able to learn how to make better judgements, take more skilful decisions and exercise effective leadership in the cut and thrust of daily action, whether at the point of making a sale or whilst leading a meeting.

Action Inquiry is a highly usable process that allows individuals and teams to flexibly modify their actions and correct errors before they have negative consequences for business outcomes and trust. It also establishes a positive climate for others’ development and for system-level organisational change.

Through Action Inquiry, an individual or team develops through a process of inquiring into their intentions, plans, actions and outcomes. The discipline of Action Inquiry enables leaders to weave together skilled strategic and interpersonal actions with high levels of attention to the impacts of their actions.

Action Inquiry can be sustained only if it begins to transform the way individuals use power. Raising awareness of and transforming unproductive assumptions cannot be accomplished by the unilateral or manipulative use of power. As executives engage actively in awareness-heightening inquiry in the midst of action, and adopt mutuality as an approach to their use of power, so Action Inquiry becomes a valuable tool in support of desired organisational outcomes.

Further Action Inquiry resources

You will find articles and books here that provide more detail of how Action Inquiry supports personal and organisational transformation.