ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the participants in a Self Managed Learning programme were elected members of a council, and from different party groups. The case is reported by Urwin. The fact that SML and action learning share this important characteristic means that the experiences of the chief executives in the programme concerned should tell us some things of significance about learning and development that are applicable in an SML context and for people at the top of organizations in particular. Action learning achieves this by focusing participants' attention on the real problems they currently face in their day-to-day work. The issue here is that, compared with SML, in a number of ways this focus in action learning is much more limited than it needs to be. The programme concerned was the Action Learning for Chief Executives (ALCE) programme at Ashridge Management College.
