On Becoming an Agile, Learning Organization

A Complex World

In the last few weeks, the world of work changed dramatically. Organizations in all sorts of industries across the globe are adapting to new ways of working, and new ways of delivering their products and services. Smart organizations are playing the long game through all of this, though. They are doing more than just modifying meetings and reporting mechanisms, investing in tooling for distributed work and focusing on productivity. The current situation is only a driver of rapid continuous improvement.  

With close attention to inspecting and adapting what works and does not work in a time of crisis, organizations that are truly agile will emerge from this event with even more resiliency, as they focus on becoming a learning organization. 

In this complex situation, organizations would do well to pay critical attention to the culture of learning they create. For an organization to reach maturity with agile, it must be skilled at achieving customer outcomes with innovation and quality in a world of complexity. Successful decision making in an increasingly complex world relies on leaders at all levels to improve the capability to learn new behaviors over time. The future is unknowable, volatile, and ambiguous, and the organizations best equipped to thrive in this environment are those that have learning as a core competency. 

Research by Bersin examined the issue of learning culture in great detail and found that companies who effectively nurture their workforce’s desire to learn are at least 30% more likely to be market leaders in their industries over an extended period of time. Yet, many managers still view training as a luxury, not a competitive and strategic necessity. 

Implementing Agile Learning and Development

To address the myriad of challenges outlined above, organizations need to rethink and retool their learning and development (L&D) programs to compliment the enterprise agile adoption. I recommend a focus on four key areas. We will explore the need to:

• ready associates for new agile roles
• help make the shift to purposeful leadership
• develop world-class agile learning and development experiences
• embed a learning culture

[A learning organization is one with] an ingrained philosophy for anticipating, reacting and responding to change, complexity and uncertainty.

― Peter Senge

Ready Associates for New Agile Roles 

As organizations evolve in their desire to gain more agility, there will be a myriad of changes to organizational structure and roles in order to enable agile delivery of customer outcomes. Coaching support will be needed during this time with a keen eye for how education offerings can support associate development and set them up for success in their new ways of working. 

Agile L&D professionals will need to work closely with associates, the coaching team, key change agents, and other constituencies to conduct skills gap analyses and identify training needs. They should then design and develop a learning program to meet a variety of needs in a variety of modalities to support our global distributed workforce and prepare them for the challenges of future work. They must also develop and evolve the learner’s journey as they navigate new agile roles, using this to adjust engagement strategies.

Here are just a few ideas for agile leaders at all levels already developed that Agile L&D professionals should tap into: 

• ICAgile programs, such as ICAgile Business Agility, (including Agility in Leadership and Operating with Agility) & ICAgile Fundamentals (including Product Ownership and Delivery Management) 
• Scrum Alliance Offerings, such as Core Scrum (CSM/CSPO) & Path to Scrum Professional (A-CSM/CSPO, CSP-SM/PO)
• Agility in the Enterprise (introduction to Spotify, Scrum@Scale, SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, others)

A Shift to Purposeful Leadership 

With a people-centered focus on agile learning and enablement of agile delivery, Agile L&D professionals must help associates transition to a mindset of purpose. This is a mindset where we recognize and celebrate that associates are passionate, innovative and committed to a meaningful and engaging workplace that serves and benefits all stakeholders. 

This, in turn, will help the organization to clarify three types of purpose. 

• Role Purpose: Why a role exists in the organization (in support of goals and objectives)
• Organizational Purpose: Why the organization exists (principles, ethics and culture)
• Personal Purpose: What motivates someone in life; their “why.” (values, experience and beliefs)

Through clarity on role and organizational purpose, Agile L&D professionals can help associates define and refine their personal purpose with experiential learning and supportive coaching in order to find meaning and engagement in the new world of work. 

Agile L&D can also help shape the way leaders lead. The role of a leader in the learning organization is that of a designer, teacher, and steward who can build a shared vision and challenge prevailing mental models. This kind of leader pours their efforts into building a culture in which the associates are continually expanding their capabilities to shape their future — that is, leaders are responsible for learning. They will model the way for others to follow, and this culture of learning will give way to the goodness that comes from a global workforce that is engaged, happy, and growing in their roles. 

[Learning organizations are] where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together. 

― Peter Senge

Develop World-Class Agile Learning and Development Experiences

Agile L&D professionals are the owners of learning and development experiences for their associates. As such, they must oversee and coordinate the execution of all agile learning offerings to ensure associates have consistently exceptional learning experiences. They help associates to bring these learnings back to their daily work and be immediately more impactful in their agile roles. 

The graphic below shows a paradigm shift in proficiency with post-training support. While training can be considered formal, in a classroom, focused on learning (instructor-led-training [ILT] or eLearning [on-demand, including gaming & simulation]), support is informal, in the workplace, focused on doing. Here we would lean on our coaching community to help provide coaching and mentoring, knowledge management, performance support, and communities of practice with expertise and social learning. We will build these post-training support programs to establish a culture of continuous learning, with success measured by the associate engagement. This will lay the foundation for a lasting leadership development program within the organization. 

source: Mark Rosenberg, At the Moment of Need: The Case for Performance Support, eLearning Guild Whitepaper, 2013

Learning programs must be aligned to a skill growth framework or plan (many HR teams develop such frameworks for career and growth planning). This will help associates move from novice (knows nothing, focus on train & learn) to competent (capable to basic standards, focus on practice & improve) to experienced (skillfully adjusts to novel situations, focus on access & discover) to master (expertly redesign work to teach others, focus on invent and lead). To meet the needs of associates along this skill growth spectrum, Agile L&D professionals will need to develop a variety of learning experiences that accommodate learning styles, needs, preferences, and expectations as they change behaviors and learn more. 

 Agile L&D professionals should also evaluate and monitor the learning programs to enhance the content, delivery, and outcomes. These will be analyzed against business outcomes and the goals of the agile transformation. Measures of success will need to be developed, but overall engagement in the programs, along with observational feedback from coaches, teams, and managers will prove the efficacy of the learning program.

Finally, Agile L&D professionals should develop an internal training capability, with a robust train-the-trainer program and rigorous feedback and evaluation to create a superb, in-house learning experience delivery team. Finally, Agile L&D professionals should stay up-to-date on the latest practices, trends, and technology in learning and development in order to incorporate new training methods and innovate against business outcomes.  

Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to. 

― Richard Branson

Embed a Learning Culture

In order to embed the learning culture described above, Agile L&D professionals strive to create a learning organization. A learning organization is an organization that actively creates, captures, transfers, and mobilizes knowledge to enable it to adapt to a changing environment. A learning organization is one that is able to change its behaviors and mind-sets as a result of experience. Some key benefits of a learning organization include: 

• Maintaining levels of innovation to stay competitive
• Being better placed to respond to external pressures
• Having the knowledge to better link resources to customer needs
• Improving the quality of outputs at all the levels
• Increasing the pace and acceptance of change within the organization
• Improving customer outcomes by focusing on our people, who will then focus on our customers

That last point is key: becoming more people-oriented as an organization through a learning culture will lead to better customer outcomes. A company focused on building and investing in human development will always win and is highly recognized in the market. A company investing in its people will grow and will be more able to sense and respond to future needs.  

Becoming a learning organization is no small task, and will surely not happen overnight. The focus areas outlined above will guide you in your efforts as an Agile L&D professional to implement the right service offerings to start that journey. 

*You can see this post and more musings from my agile journey at iterationsofjason.com

Until the Next Iteration . . . 

Jason