ACTION LEARNING

Abstract

Knowing and Doing in Many Partnerships Long before there were any business schools or professors of management, back in the oldest of antiquity, the students of human progress had already concluded that to know such‐and‐such was identical to being able to do it. All of us, of course, have numerous acquaintances who say this proposition is nonsense, since they themselves know all manner of things without also being able to do them. For example, they “know” that if they were able to run the London marathon in less than two hours they would win it, but since they cannot run it in under five, then it is nonsense to say that to “know” and to be able to “do” are the same thing. Sophocles, who was five years old when his family friend, Miltiades, led the Athenians to victory over the Persians on the field of Marathon so long ago, had the secrets of action learning well before the hundreds of management consultants who have discovered it in the last 48 hours or so. In his play, The Women of Trachis, written between 420 and 415 BC, he says: