Four Approaches to Learning from Experience (2024)

Investigates what lies behind the cliche that “managers learn fromexperience”. Reviews a project undertaken with 21 directors in 15organizations in the United Kingdom, who were interviewed over a periodof three months about their experiences at work and what they hadlearned from them. Shows the possibility of enhancing capacity to learnfrom experience through an improved analysis of the alternative ways inwhich managers approach their experiences. The apparently obviousproposition that managers learn in hindsight by looking at theexperiences they have had and, much less frequently, learn byidentifying in advance learning opportunities needs to be turned into amore discriminating analysis. Instead, shows that there are fourapproaches: (1) Intuitive; (2) Incidental; (3) Retrospective; and (4)Prospective. Offers a description of each of these Four Approaches andpresents examples of the thinking involved in each description. Inaddition presents a case in which four different individuals illustrateeach of the Four Approaches in relation to a shared experience ofdiscussing a problem at a meeting. Briefly illustrates the results ofthe Four Approaches in terms of whether directors acquired knowledge,skills or insights as a result. The concept of insights is developed asan alternative to the more familiar attitudes, it being suggested thatthis description is more suitable in terms of what the directorsactually said about the nature of their learning – the “A‐ha” effect.Briefly presents the view that the Four Approaches concepts could beused to enhance individuals′ awareness of their own ways of learningfrom experience, and suggests that this is particularly necessary interms of both formal management development philosophy, which involvesproviding lots of experiences, and also of the many informal andaccidental experiences which managers will have. Finally, reviews theextent to which the project team experienced their own learning from theproject in terms of the Four Approaches.