To be truly effective, any development initiative not only has to have a clear goal, but also has to take account of how people learn. This is essential, to ensure that we as managers can provide the necessary stimulation, practice and feedback at key stages of the learning process.

And yet, how often do we even give this consideration? We may assume, for example, that everyone will learn from material presented in a distance learning format and will absorb information in the same way.

Many theories have been formulated about the learning process. The continuous nature of the continuing professional development (CPD) cycle will be familiar, with four stages:

• Having an experience
• Thinking about that experience
• Making some sense of it
• Trying it out in practice.

The model can be modified in a number of ways but for our purposes we can see it as a four stage cyclical process.

This model makes the learning process seem simple and straightforward, when in reality it is complex. The four stages are not fixed categories and people differ in how they respond to them: joining and leaving the cycle at different stages. They will pay more attention to certain stages and tend to recognise their learning at these points. However, the key point is that their learning will only be complete if they work their way around the entire cycle.