Sowing the seeds of change: action learning in Merseytravel

Abstract

Merseytravel is a large and diverse public sector organisation facing significant changes, but faced with a cultural inertia which is a legacy inherited from historical management styles. Action learning is now being used with great success as part of their change programme, to promote empowerment of the staff, challenge historical ways of working and positively influence the culture to make it more open to emergent change. The article describes both the contextual and practical issues of Merseytravel's action learning programme, and this will be of interest for any organisation supporting their culture to embrace change.

Keywords:

• action
• learning
• empowerment
• culture
• change
• challenge

Notes

Unionlearn is an organisation established by the British TUC (Trade Union Congress) to help unions reach out to all members who could benefit from study at the workplace or a local college or learning provider. One of their goals is to establish and extend partnerships with key union learning stakeholders (www.unionlearn.org.uk).