This is the second post in a series on learning agility.
Learning agility, which we examined in the previous blog, “Learning Agility: Looking Beyond Experience to Find Next-Generation Leaders,” is a key metric for placing employees in jobs in which they can excel and accelerate the success of their companies. In today’s business environment, learning agility has become increasingly more relevant as companies face a world filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). More importantly, learning agility provides a more sophisticated method of evaluating talent than experience alone.
Leaders must beware of falling into the same traps with learning agility that many companies made when experience was considered the most highly valued trait to assess employees’ strengths. If you treat learning agility with simply a “more is better” approach, you run the risk of misaligning your talent—and laying the groundwork for disruption. Agile learners are best placed in positions that require breadth, while less agile learners are best served in positions that require depth.
Here’s how to identify best practices for using learning agility to deepen and strengthen the talent pool in your organization.
Identifying and Using Learning Agility
First, let’s quickly recap learning agility, which is a concept developed by the executive recruitment company Korn Ferry and the Center for Creative Leadership. Simply put, learning agility means “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do.” Agile learners are natural problem solvers and motivators. They quickly grasp new situations and instinctively know how to strike the right balance between risk and reward. Their experience helps them evaluate new business conditions, but it does not restrict their thinking.
Using learning agility to strengthen your leadership team boils down to identifying agile learners and plugging them into the appropriate positions. Keep that last phrase—APPROPRIATE positions—in mind.
Using learning agility to enhance your company means carefully considering where you put your most agile learners. Learning agility should be part of a matrix of complementary metrics that helps the organization match skill sets with job requirements, as well as address business needs. Also, bear in mind that a high degree of learning agility doesn’t automatically qualify someone for a position. As a matter of fact, agile learning can be a disastrous combination with some positions.
For example, your company promotes a highly agile learner to lead a very technical, process-driven operation. Success in this position means having deep subject matter expertise and a methodical mind that thrives in an environment where standardized processes and strict performance metrics are necessary.
This isn’t the type of position for highly agile learners. They tend toward breadth; they need and seek out change, challenges, and problems to solve. They’ll feel stifled in a process-intense environment, and the team may become frustrated as the agile learner tries to create a highly dynamic environment filled with more change than is needed. Even if agile learners excel in a process-driven role through sheer self-discipline, the experience may prompt them to start looking for opportunities elsewhere.
Instead, find a more fluid, change-oriented position for the agile learner. Put someone that tends more toward depth in charge of the process-driven operation, which requires deep subject matter expertise and a mind for detail. Both employees will be happier playing to their strengths, as will their teams, and your company will reap the benefits.
Another best practice for managing your agile learners is to not automatically put them on the management track. Some agile learners may not be satisfied managing a team and working through other people. They’re more valuable to your company as individual contributors or leading small teams.
At my organization, we test leadership candidates in a variety of situations. This way, they can gain confidence through new experiences, and we can see how they respond. It’s also a good approach for determining how your agile learners can best help your company at executive, management, or individual contributor levels.
Agile Learning Belongs to Everyone
HR executives should be prepared for some resistance as they infuse learning agility into their organizations. Many executives and managers can be reluctant to “label” their talent in this way. Rather than referring to individuals as having more or less learning agility, a better way to think about it is to understand whether they tend toward breadth or depth. An organization needs both, and matching employees’ strengths to the appropriate positions is a winning combination.
Another area of reluctance may be the willingness of managers to share their sharpest insights on their talent for fear of having their most valuable employees poached by other departments. Companies that face this dynamic need a cultural shift. The talent pool has to be an organizational asset, not an individual executive’s asset. Evaluating managers on how they develop and export talent, and recognizing the most successful is the first step to getting past the initial resistance.
Being able to spot learning agility is highly desirable in this era of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Employing the concept judiciously, after careful consideration of a position’s demands and the skills needed, enhances your organization. It promotes this idea of a learning community and creates loyalty by placing people in positions where they can excel and truly benefit the company.
