Skilled for improvement? Learning communities and the skills needed to improve care: an evaluative service development

This report tells the story of the Learning Communities Initiative, in which an experienced research team used an action approach (combining action research and action learning) to study four improvement projects across two sites, while working with participants to facilitate the flow of knowledge and learning.

The authors identify three sets of skills – ‘technical’, ‘soft’ and ‘learning’ skills – that they found were essential for successful implementation of improvement. They use the analogy of a three-sided pyramid: to reach the point of sustained improvement (the apex of the pyramid), the organisational base (environment, culture, structures and resources) should be broad and solid enough to support the construction of the three ‘walls’ (each of the three sets of skills) to the same (maximum) height.