Professional Documents
Culture Documents
A friend who coaches a girls soccer team recently shared, that after a tough loss, one of her
13-year-old players said, “Well, you know coach, you either win or you learn.” Yeah! We
really are coming to appreciate the value of failure and experiments that don’t go exactly as
expected.
No one will argue that today’s business climate is more dynamic and changeable than ever
before. Many have written about the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous)
world within which we must operate. As a result, businesses must become increasingly agile.
This demands flexible, highly responsive strategies as well as leaders who are:
Expansive, possibility-oriented thinkers, able to recognize patterns, connect dots, and see
changing conditions before others do;
Collaborative, inclusive, and curious;
Able to act quickly, set new direction, make smart but fast decisions, and engage in focused
experimentation; and
Equally comfortable improvising as necessary and also translating those improvised moves
that worked into codified strategies, systems, processes and tools that help the organization
continue to evolve.
Given this expanded job description, it’s no longer viable for leaders to rely exclusively upon
today’s knowledge, skills, approaches, and strategies. In the words of author Marshall
Goldsmith, “What got you here won’t get you there.” The ability to learn, develop and
grow is today’s only sustainable competitive advantage. Hence the importance of learning
agility.
Learning agility defined
While definitions abound, two in particular paint a vivid picture of what learning agility is
and why it’s important.
Korn/Ferry International builds upon this description, defining learning ability as the:
“Ability and willingness to learn from experience, and then apply that learning to perform
successfully under new situations.”
And since both definitions include a focus on competencies, capabilities, and ability, the good
news for anyone interested in improving performance and organizational impact is that
learning agility can be learned!
It’s easy to “miss the meaning” when you’re in the proverbial hamster wheel of activity.
That’s why building greater learning agility can be as simple as pausing routinely throughout
the day to ask:
Business that want to cultivate leaders with these qualities need look no
farther than thier local public schools. Teachers who exhibit these
characteristics are berated or continuously over looked for leadership
potential on a regular basis. As a result, many become disheartened due to
the lack of return on thier steep investments in culture change. This was a
very empowering article. Thank you!