6th Chapter

Organization

Action Learning Cycle

December 10, 2024

Source: Ulex Project

Organizations working in a state of climate emergency will need a discipline of learning.

Some of this learning will be from past experience of social movements. We try to give some appetizers in the section §2.2. Movements and Currents in the book. (That section glosses over extremely rich movement experiences and therefore (1) oversimplifies the experience of the movement organizers while at the same time (2) ignores lessons drawn from their successes and mistakes by later organizers. Like any oversimplification exercise, it produces a distorted image. We still hope that the section sparks curiosity for the readers to go and learn more about those past examples.)

Having said that, most learning happens through lived experience and/or by direct observation. We therefore need to be very intentional and attentive about our strategic experiments, and our experimentation must have embedded in it a clear process of feeding back into itself.

We recommend the Action Learning Cycle framework developed by the Ulex project, as part of strategy planning.

For many people involved in practices of social transformation, the pressures to act can feel enormous. In our attempts to respond to the problems we perceive, action follows action in a quick cycle of succession. The space to reflect and evaluate is given secondary importance against the urgency and desperation of the demands we are responding to. We act and act again, and consequently we often reproduce strategies and tactics which are no longer reflecting the current reality we should address or which at least could become more effective.

If we are to generate healthy leaderful movements we need to grow our capacity to break out of reactive cycles, we need to find the time to stop, reflect and learn from experience.

This tool gives us language and a framework for this. Using the tool consciously within our groups, supports us to strengthen our “ongoing learning competency”. Once a group is familiar with the model, a reminder every now and then can be a helpful invitation to take a step back and to create the space and time for deeper reflection.