1 1. 1 The book The book in your hand is not a scientific book, although it is based just as much on science as on my own experience in consultancy and management. As its title suggests, we want to build a bridge between the leadership that is typical of facilitation techniques and that of pr- ect and network management. Therefore this book does more than p- vide you with insights into the mainly methodical Messages we want to transmit. It will also make suggestions for how to train facilitators, and in the centre of the book you will find a wealth of 40 carefully selected and reality-proof Tools, many of which have never been pre- ously published in English, and in some case have never been published at all. With all of these you will find a presentation of our way of using them. Our sole objective is to offer our views and experience in impr- ing communication for effective co-operation, i. e. we want people who collaborate in some way to find and decide on the best courses of action, then share and implement these decisions better. We want to promote learning by doing, just as well as doing by learning. So this book is for people who in some way are responsible for s- cessful co-operation in projects, in and across organisations or networks of organisations. Action Learning has many fathers (but few mothers) and roots.

Messages for facilitators and lateral leaders

The functions and roles of network facilitators
Moderation as a role
Visualisation - why and how it helps you to understand and remember
Basic concepts of perception and communication
Basic concepts of learning and competence
The concept of responsibility
Basic concepts of organisation and co-operation
Basic concepts of management and leadership
Communities of practice and self-organisation
Basic concepts of knowledge and knowledge management
Project work as a work style
The nature of quality: continuous improvement, continuous learning
Basic concepts of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)
Basic concepts of networks and clusters
Learning networks - constructing social capital
Reminder - Konrad Lorenz dixit
Didactics and curriculum
Making learning easy - facilitation and the didactics of action learning
A curriculum of action learning - the modules
Tools
Improving Communication
Collecting information
Planning and managing projects
Analysing problems and preparing decision making
Growing experience - from unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence
The SME ACTor project experience
e-Facilitating networking in distance co-operation contexts.