A Tribute to Dr. Reg Revans
Training Journal Abstract
Issue: November 2000
Title: Reg Revans: a man of action
Author: Mike Levy and Martin Delahoussaye
Document Number 11004
Mike Levy and Martin Delahoussaye pay tribute to Dr. Reg Revans, founding father of Action Learning.
Who are the great management thinkers of the 20th century, the ones who have made the most profound contribution to the way we organize work, and manage productivity and growth? Ask this question today and you could come back a year later to find the debate would still be going strong. Certainly, few would argue with candidates such as Taylor, Maslow, McLelland, Drucker, Handy and Demming, for example. They are, after all, the names you will most often see referenced and quoted in the vast quantity of management literature written in the last hundred years. The name of Reg Revans, though, is rarely included.
Professor Reg Revans pioneered Action Learning (AL), considered by some to be one of the most important ideas to have emerged in management and organizational development in the last 50 years. Although a definition is elusive (and, Revans would argue, counter-productive), what lies at its heart is our willingness to recognize not what we know, but what we don't know. Then comes searching questioning and deep reflection. The core of AL is relatively simple and can be expressed by the equation L = P + Q, where learning (L) occurs through programmed knowledge (P) and insightful questioning (Q). There are elements of constructivism in Revans' ideas; the roots of self-managed learning and empowerment are evident too. But to judge it in these terms is to miss entirely the essence of AL.
Being aware of your own ignorance as a starting point for learning did not come naturally to the many professors and academics Revans has challenged during his life. It is, perhaps, one reason why his star has never shone in the academic pantheon. Revans has always been too much of a challenger, an iconoclast, to go down well at High Table.
The British have never been good at dealing with genius but in Professor Revans' case, fame is really not the point. The essence of Revans' seminal work on AL is to empower the learner, not to glorify the teacher. Not surprisingly he has little to say of gurus, commenting: 'We do not need to sit at the feet of experts.' Sir Peter Parker is unequivocal in his praise for Revans: 'If I ever wrote a book of heroes, Revans would be there. He reminds us that industry is here to serve not to lead society.'
Revans is 93 years of age and lives with his daughter in a small village near Whitchurch in Shropshire. He has led a remarkably full and interesting life. Working as a top-flight physicist at the Cavendish Laboratories in Cambridge in the 1930s, he rubbed shoulders with the good and the great. He studied under Rutherford and JJ Thomas, fathers of nuclear physics. He also worked with Albert Einstein who told him: 'If you think you understand a problem, make sure you are not deceiving yourself.'
Cambridge was a seed-bed for Revans' ideas. Cavendish acted as a laboratory of the mind for Revans: 'Every week there was a seminar, and to speak at it one had to confirm that one's researches were not going as hoped; one became skilled in describing one's very ignorance and, more than that, in trading it with others equally ready to confess their own. Over the next half-century, I have tried to practice what the Cavendish taught me; to trade my confusion with that of others, seeking to interpret my own doubt by keeping away from experts with prefabricated answers and questions they do not understand.' However, the gradual development of AL, a concept almost certainly ahead of its time, began when he worked at the National Coal Board.
AL is not always an easy or secure process, and while it has no firm rules, there are conditions under which it thrives. And while the arguments about AL continue, Revans keeps thinking. With the help of Albert Barker, his thoughts are still fresh and challenging: 'This idea has occurred to me for a year or two now … we should be getting together with two or three other people and arguing among ourselves what it is we thing we are trying to do and why it is we we're trying to do this. Because only if we can meet each other and argue shall we get any fresh vision of what it is we're up to.'
It is now more than 50 years since Professor Reg Revans first postulated his ideas on AL, but they are not yet ready to be consigned to any history book of management thought. At 93, Revans is still excited by the future and is willing to throw down the gauntlet, challenge our complacent sense of cleverness, make us roll up our sleeves and work much harder to achieve that most elusive of human qualities: wisdom.
The above is an adaptation of the full article, which appeared in the November 2000 edition of Training Journal. Reg Revans talks about his inspiration for Action Learning and the first time he implemented it. Others who are close to Revans (for example Professor Albert Barker, who provided much of the research for the article), Lex Dilworth, Verna Willis and Sir Peter Parker, talk about Revans and of their own applications of AL. Additionally, there's a definition of Action Learning, plus further details of Revans' work.
Reg Revans the father of action learning passed on in 2003.
International Management Centres Association [http://www.imcassociation.org]
Memories of Reg Revans – 1907 – 2003
by Charles Margerison
see http://www.viprojects.com/Articles/Documents/Memories_of_Reg_Revans.pdf