Learning Through Improvisation: How to Make Training Creative, Flexible and Spontaneous [Hardcover]

Jackson's background as a BBC producer and a journalist serves him well. Not only is this book unusually well crafted, but he brings his experience of working with leading impro comedy performers like the London-based Comedy Store Players (Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence et al). The basic thread of the book is the parallel between designing and running a training event and performing "impro". Jackson manages to address this parallel philosophically as well as practically, resulting in a book which will satisfy a range of audiences (trainers, HR staff, performers, people people) at different levels - no mean feat. As such, this is a rare beast - a book that says something genuinely new.

The book takes us through the various roles of the trainer - setting things up, bonding the group, acting as a model for the learners, setting goals and supports, creating novel activities, keeping the group's (and their own) energy up, drawing out resources from participants, and being spontaneous through to the final "performance" and subsequent reviews. NLP trainers may particularly enjoy the variety of thoughts and practical suggestions in the book. I personally enjoyed Jackson's sections on the impression of confidence (a bit like anchoring without anchors) and spontaneity - these tricky subjects are dealt with simply yet subtly.

Impro Learning is unusually well-crafted as a piece of writing. Jackson's journalism background is an asset, and the words are well chosen, clear and at times unexpectedly witty in a rather understated British way. This allows the author to cram a great deal into his 200-odd pages. There is a great further reading list, along with full references and an index. The only potential downside is the rapidity with which Jackson leaps from, for instance, the philosophy of rule-based games to some basic discussion of icebreaker exercises - I was occasionally left dizzy, but elated by the melange. The price (£42.50) is outrageous, as with many of Gower's books which are clearly aimed at corporate training departments with budgets to match. However, it's only rarely that a really new idea appears in print, and this is worth a place on any discerning trainer's bookshelf.

Designed to increase the repertoire of trainers and senior managers wanting or having to become more effective, it is very readable, informative and well referenced.

Likely to be on the bookcase of organisational classics, it encourages positive self development in a non directive counselling style. Improvised learning can, if you wish, the key to unlock new doors of greater creativity and more success.
It is full of simple yet powerful techniques on all aspects of training to develop providers, who it stresses are unlikely, ever, to have all the answers.

The trainers he argues, can through openness to new learning, change to become a more competent performer. By modelling certain behaviours, she / he can act as though participants are going to succeed and as a result inspire them, without desception, to greater things themselves during sessions. A likely consequence is that they will be more effective when they return to the business arena.

Drawing on sources as diverse as theatre, accelerated learning, sports, co-operative games and psychology, it starts from where the individual reader is on their learning curve, and guides her / him forward like the jazz musician to encroach, consenting, by degrees into the unknown.

A very refreshing approach to a topic well trodden by other authors and recommended to HSJ readers likely to be delivering the future health care agenda and who are open to new approaches.