What is learning agility




















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We frequently see this in terms of new technology. People may resist a new system implementation even when the new system is clearly better than the old one. Employees had to change how they worked, which often required new skills. There were new technical skills required — like using video conferences rather than face to face meetings. There were also new soft skills — like time management and boundary setting.

Working from home while your spouse and children are also there requires an entirely new set of working rules. Competitors will not stay still. One of the biggest stories of how a lack of learning agility destroyed a company is the sad story of Kodak.

Before digital cameras, Kodak dominated the film market. At its peak, Kodak had , employees. It now has fewer than 5, What happened? Kodak invented the digital camera in , but they were too scared of how it would damage their primary business — film. It did not go away. Their competitors developed digital cameras, and the film industry fell to ruins. All businesses face this threat.

Without the ability to learn new skills, create new products, and adjust with speed to new market conditions, businesses fail. To avoid collapse, businesses need agile learners. Korn Ferry identified five different dimensions of learning agility. They write:.

Each of these is critical to having a successful agile business. These are not the only essential components of learning.

Other organizations suggest things such as collaboration and information gathering as critical learning skills. These things also show flexibility and the ability to gather information from multiple sources. An agile person needs to accept that change is inevitable and not hold it back. What would I see a learning-agile person doing? These questions are where learning agility becomes more complicated. Researcher Scott DeRue at the University of Michigan established a model that identifies speed and flexibility as the two most important factors determining learning agility.

Learning agility is about being able to digest a large amount of information quickly speed and figure out what is most important. DeRue also said you need to be able to change frameworks flexibility that help you understand how different things are related or connected. In other words, flexibility is about being able to change frameworks as necessary to explain what is going on.

DeRue also made a distinction between learning agility and learning ability. Earlier, I noted that learning agility is being in an unfamiliar situation, not knowing what to do and figuring it out. Ability takes you to a certain point.

Then, agility becomes more important. DeRue says there are both cognitive and behavioral components to learning agility. The behavioral ones are more learnable, because if you do the things described by the behavior, then you are demonstrating that part of learning agility. They are also twice as likely to be promoted.

While individual success is a useful measure, the real impact of learning agility is best understood by examining the effect on the overall organisation. Learning agility undoubtedly has a positive impact on both individual and organisational success.

While this instinct is often accurate, to really understand workforce agility — and therefore enterprise agility — organisations need to assess learning agility at an individual level.

Identifying and assessing enterprise-wide levels of learning agility can help business leaders ascertain whether they are positioned for success, given the business strategy they are pursuing, and the areas where focused attention on growing learning agility will have the most impact.

HR has a critical role to play in helping CEOs and leaders move from their intuitive understanding of learning agility to one that can guide decision-making and drive organisational success. The WEF recommended immediate focus on reinventing HR to better manage skills disruption through using analytical tools to spot talent trends and gaps and provide insight to the business. Looking to the longer term, the WEF emphasised the need to incentivise lifelong learning.

By supporting the business to develop learning agility, HR will step up and make an important contribution to the overall success of the business. It is also vital to identify precise areas in which talent and strategy are aligned—or where there are shortfalls. HR professionals are critical to helping the business unleash its learning agility through building awareness of the competitive edge that increased learning agility offers and elevating it to a business imperative.

In combination, these two roles position HR to partner with the business to drive performance in three ways. The world of work has permanently changed, with volatility the new norm. Ways of thinking and working that previously led to success now result in stagnation, or worse, regression. Success requires leaders and individual contributors who are creative, flexible and open to innovative thinking.

Above all, individuals must be willing and able to embrace learning agility and organisations must enable them to maximise this potential, unlocking individual and enterprise success. Agile organisations need a new breed of leaders. Join the webinar: Building Digital Leadership to learn how to turn your existing talent into agile leaders. Register now.



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