Learning Agility: The Impact on Recruitment and Retention

By Linda S. Gravett and Sheri A. Caldwell

This book concretely defines the concept of learning agility and offers a business case for why organizations of all types should concentrate on building and sustaining this approach. It provides readers with a holistic approach towards the topic, and helps leaders leverage the learning agility of individual employees to sustain a learning-agile workplace culture. 
Synthesizing academic research and practical approaches, this book takes leaders through ways to interview and assess potential employees for learning agility, develop and foster an environment for learning agility, and measure the results of a learning agile workplace. The authors present an innovative learning agility assessment which has been developed, tested, and implemented by clients and outline metrics which can measure the results of a learning agile workforce. This little-understood but highly advantageous approach is crucial for leaders to understand if they wish to deliver results and impact their organizations' bottom line. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781137599650

Book preview

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Linda S. Gravett and Sheri A. CaldwellLearning Agility10.1057/978-1-137-59965-0_1

1. What is Learning Agility?

Linda S. Gravett¹  and Sheri A. Caldwell²

(1)

Just the Basics, Inc., Gravett and Associates, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

(2)

The Andersons, Inc., Maumee, OH, USA

Can a round peg fit into a square box? Can an old dog learn new tricks?

It depends….

While this answer may seem like a cop out, it’s true. The answer to these questions depends on the individual involved. A person who has learning agility could fit into a square box and learn a new trick, regardless of age.

What is learning agility? It sounds cool, and Sheri remembers hearing Eddie Cochrane, her gymnastics coach, telling her mother when she was younger and brought to Parents’ Day that she wasn’t as agile as Sheri was. The coach meant flexible. So, if you add the word learning to agility, does that translate to flexible learning? Yes.

Learning agility looks at both current performance and long-term potential. The concept of learning agility has been used to describe individuals who possess skills such as openness, willingness to learn, and flexibility. In addition, a learning-agile person is curious about the world and has high tolerance for ambiguity, good people skills, vision, and innovation (Eichinger & Lombardo, 2004).

In general, learning agility relates to adaptability and willingness to confront the unknown. Specifically, learning agility attempts to predict an individual’s potential performance in new tasks.

Interviewers do this all the time. The thought is that past performance is a predictor of future behavior, so they structure their interview questions to assess whether or not a candidate has the potential to transfer what they’ve done or learned previously to a new and/or different situation.

There are four types of learning agility:

1.

Mental

2.

People

3.

Change

4.

Results

Mental agility refers to individuals who are comfortable with complexity, examine problems carefully, and make connections between different things. Sheri has a coworker who can solve math problems in his head. He breaks down the equation into smaller parts and then puts the pieces back together with ease. This is mental agility.

People agility refers to individuals who know themselves well and can readily deal with diverse people and tough situations. For example, Sheri’s former boss hired her specifically because her personality style was the opposite of the boss’ style. Her boss sometimes got too emotional and wanted someone on the team who could handle conflict without a lot of noise. Those with high people agility understand the value of different perspectives and surround themselves with a diverse team instead of surrounding themselves with others just like them.

Change agility refers to individuals who like to experiment and can cope effectively with the discomfort of rapid change. They say that Thomas Edison took over 1000 trials to find the right element for his lightbulb. When asked about his high failure rate, he is purported to have said, Now I know 999 ways not to invent the lightbulb. This is an example of someone who is high in change agility.

Finally, results agility refers to those resourceful individuals who can deliver results in first-time situations by inspiring teams and having significant impact (Ferry, 2015). While many individuals may consistently deliver strong results in situations similar to those they have faced before, the key differentiator is their ability to repeatedly deliver top results in new and challenging situations—in other words, being results agile. An often-cited example of change agility is when Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, had a young MBA managing a business and lost 2 million dollars in the venture. When Mr. Gerstner called this individual into the office, the MBA said, I’m assuming you want my resignation? Mr. Gerstner said, I just invested 2 million dollars in your education. I don’t want you to quit, I want to know what you learned.

In 2001, James Connolly conducted a study to examine the construct validity of a questionnaire called the Choices Questionnaire that supported the theory of Learning Agility (Connolly, 2001). He found that the Choices Questionnaire tapped a construct unique to cognitive ability and personality measures, suggesting that learning agility may have considerable value in personnel selection. Think back to the previous statement about interviewers trying to assess an individual’s past performance and its transferability to future behaviors. Further, he examined the relationship of learning agility with job performance and job promotability. This study found that the Choices Questionnaire predicted job performance and job promotability above and beyond cognitive ability and personality. How many times have you seen someone who is a poor test taker yet a star performer? It happens all the time, yet we still use cognitive ability tests in K-12 to assess a student’s potential to succeed in school-related tasks, or as a pre-employment test to determine an individual’s aptitude or ability to solve job-related problems. While this data was based on those in law enforcement, it has practical application and transferability to other fields as well.

So, if we have a way to help predict job performance and job promotability, why is it that only 7 % of respondents agree that their companies had enough talented managers and only 3 % agree with the statement: We develop people effectively? It’s no wonder talent management and retention have become prime focal points of many organizations, regardless of the level (Eichinger & Lombardo, 2004).

Talent management represents an organization’s efforts to attract, develop, train, and retain capable and valued employees. The goal is generally to have people with the knowledge, skills, and abilities—not to mention the commitment—needed not only for current success but also for future advancement opportunities.

In the 1990s, one-third of the CEOs in the Fortune 500 were replaced (Bennis & O’Toole, 2000; Charan & Colvin, 1999).

We’ve seen a continuing trend of Fortune 500 companies appointing new CEOs between 2010 and 2015: Walmart, GM, Apple, Phillips, CVS Health, and Johnson & Johnson, for example, have all changed CEOs within this time frame. While there are a variety of causes for this high turnover among CEOs, one implication is that organizations have great difficulty in spotting and nurturing talent that has staying power once in key positions. (See Footnote 1 Eichinger & Lombardo, 2004).

Yet, the C-suite executives are realizing that a distinguishing characteristic of successful organizations is the ability to identify, develop, and deploy exceptional leadership talent (Barner, 2006).

Unfortunately, we still see organizations promoting individuals before they are ready for a leadership role, where their lack of preparedness causes them to fail. This happens for a variety of reasons, such as choosing a family member because it seems the right thing to do (or is hard to say no) or due to the tenure of a person who has been with the company for so long that it seems to make sense. Yet, those are not the right reasons.

In other words, if organizations knew how to hire for and develop learning agility, they would gain an advantage over the competition. The problem is that figuring out exactly how to do this is more of an art than a science. There is not a magic formula or an Easy Button, so gaining a better understanding of what learning agility is may help you realize it better when you see it. And that’s the key: distinguishing high performing organizations and/or high performing individuals from those that are missing this exceptional learning-agile leadership talent.

From an HR perspective, Sheri often motivates the leaders she’s worked with by telling them that in order for them to get promoted, they need to have their replacement ready. Too many times insecure leaders don’t give their employees sufficient tools for them to succeed in fear of getting over-shadowed. Instead, a better way to look at this type of situation is to focus on how well-developed the leader’s staff is, which highlights how capable the leader is and ready for the promotion.

With our tough economy and a plethora of competition in the marketplace, it’s not surprising that two-thirds of startup companies fail. So, what is it that makes some companies last? While there are a myriad of reasons, such as financial strength, technical competence, imagination, and innovation, customer service, competitive pricing, and emotional intelligence, there’s one factor that is behind every successful organization, and that’s employing a learning-agile staff.

Think about how Circuit City, Polaroid, Firestone, Laura Ashley, and such others had huge success, but when a competitor was introduced or the marketplace changed, the formula that had brought them success brought them failure instead. The fresh thinking that led to a company’s initial success is replaced by a rigid devotion to the status quo (Sull, 1999).

Time and time again, studies show that the ability to learn from experience is the differentiator of successful executives from unsuccessful ones (Charan, Drotter, & Noel, 2011; Goldsmith & Reiter, 2007; McCall, 1998). For example, research shows that successful executives have strong and active learning patterns obtained from key job assignments. They learn faster, not because they are more intelligent but because they have more effective learning skills and strategies. They are learning-agile and able to translate learnings from key experiences (Ferry, 2015).

In contrast, the unsuccessful executives (many of whom had been very successful for many years and had experience of working on many of the same key assignments) derailed because they did not learn from their jobs. They underestimated the novelty of new challenges and performed as they had performed previously. (Ferry, 2015) The ability to learn from experience is what makes and develops expert leaders (Eichinger and Lombardo, 2004).

As stated earlier, it took Edison 1000 attempts before he created the lightbulb. One of Sheri’s former employers sold promotional products to pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. They bought tchotchkes for their failure parties in honor of intelligent yet failed experiments. Their thought process was that the quicker they failed, the quicker they could get to success and beat the competition, not to mention potentially leading to even newer discoveries. Since failure was celebrated, they promoted a learning culture. Instead of stifling discussion, they encouraged employees to discuss problems, to correct and learn from failure, and, in turn, to translate these lessons into improvement opportunities and, ultimately, successes.

This means that not only do companies have to hire and/or develop learning-agile employees but they also need to be agile themselves as an organization. For example, The ABC Company made a decision in 1950, which made sense at that time, requiring all employees to travel to the corporate headquarters for employee orientation, but that may not be as feasible now as it was 65 years ago. As The ABC Company grows and becomes geographically more diverse, the number of new hires traveling in may become cost-prohibitive, and they may need to be more agile in their thinking of how employee orientation is delivered. Perhaps the new hires could be trained through Skype? Perhaps one trainer could travel to meet a group of employees, thus saving thousands of travel and entertainment dollars. Moreover, perhaps the content of the training, which was once timely and relevant, could be revised and completed in an online format, or even in a blended-learning type of situation where some is done online and some in person, for example. There are endless possibilities. The point is that the organizations’ leaders help create the culture, and both need to be agile and willing to change as the needs of the company change.

Talent management is something that is done with and for an organization’s high-potential employees. Additionally, talent management has another perspective concerning the leadership pipeline, which is often overlooked. The leadership pipeline represents those individuals in the organization’s talent pool, particularly its managerial talent, who are managed as emerging leaders or high-potential individuals. In other words, these employees have been identified as having the knowledge, skills, and abilities to advance through the organization into a variety of functions and roles.

Those in the pipeline may be identified as ready now, meaning that if the person above them wins the lottery, he or she would be able to step in and take over. Other individuals may be identified as ready in 1–2 years or perhaps 2+ years. Knowing the readiness of those in the leadership pipeline allows managers to focus their development efforts in the appropriate areas. They can then focus on any gap causing the future leaders to not be quite ready now, in order to close the gap in the time indicated. This is a great way to plan for an individual’s development and to show the future leaders how worthwhile their commitment to the organization is and what the path is to get them on