Learning Agility – It Matters Way More Than You Think!

With change being the only constant, the one thing we all need is agility. Adapting to changing business demands, defining new ways of working, keeping pace with technology that can impact our work… all of these require us to be highly agile. Our reality can best be described as a VUCA world - "Volatile," "Uncertain," "Complex," and "Ambiguous."

And we in L&D have a lot on our plate to develop our workforce through training, regardless of the industry we are in. I think we sometimes forget to pat ourselves on the back for doing a commendable job in developing all kinds of domain-specific skills.

However, with the urgent need for upskilling and reskilling, AI radically transforming the learning landscape, businesses investing in L&D more and more and expecting massive results, it is not enough to just focus on hard skills. Soft skills increasingly matter in the age of AI, and the topmost skill we and our teams need to thrive in this VUCA world is Learning Agility.?

So when was the last time you trained your employees on learning agility? Before you answer that, let’s look at what this elusive skill is, and why it matters.

So What Exactly is Learning Agility?

Learning agility is a mixed bag of abilities/skills/attitudes that enable a person to learn, unlearn, continue learning and adapt to changing situations easily. It is indispensable if we are to future-proof ourselves as individuals and as a business.

Why Does It Matter?

A recent Work Trend Index Annual Report from Microsoft and LinkedIn shows some interesting data on the use of AI in organizations. It stated that AI power users are 61% more likely to hear from their CEO about the importance of using generative AI at work - clearly indicating who drove the change in their organizations when it came to AI skills. Being quick to spot the need for developing a certain skill and then acting on it – that’s agility in practice. Effective leaders demonstrate a forward-looking, future-proofing, curious mindset that can quickly spot possibilities amidst uncertainties.

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And leaders know how important it is for every employee to develop a leader mindset when it comes to agility. Learning agility in particular. Also:

• HR understands the importance of hiring employees who have a learning mindset and of providing learning opportunities to achieve better employee retention. They seek passionate individuals who have invested in their learning beyond what their organizations and academic institutions have provided for them,
• Managers seek out the most agile team members for risky or ambiguous high-stake projects, where there is no clear precedent. Embracing the unknown is an attitude required for learning agility.
• If you look at performance data, every star performer in your organization is someone who was/is willing to sail the high seas of learning adventure.
• We ourselves seek out colleagues who have an active curious problem-solving mindset when we need to brainstorm or ideate. All aspects of learning agility.

?The one common in demand skill across all these scenarios is employees’ ability to be lifelong learners and learn quickly while working and working while learning. But can our workforce be trained in learning agility? Isn’t it something one is born with? The short answer is yes, learning agility is a muscle that can be developed through the right kind of impetus, inputs and training. In this article, I’ll share a few informal ways of helping employees develop this ability.

?A few best practices

• Leverage Leadership Inputs

Encourage the sharing of leadership inputs with the rest of the team where appropriate. Maybe managers are aware of a problem that was discussed during a meet with leaders. While not disclosing any confidential part of the problem, share this with teams as a challenge on how best to solve this. You may be pleasantly surprised by how many put their thinking hats on when they are actively encouraged to participate, regardless of hierarchy. This exercise helps in demonstrating agile learning/problem-solving. And inspires the more passive employees to do the same. Looking for the top 4 learning strategies for effective leadership training? Read this blog to find out.

• Tap the Top Learners

Everyone has their fave tips and tricks to work efficiently and effectively. Encourage your top learners to share their application of learning with the rest of the team. Challenge the team to evaluate each input in the light of what can be used by quickly adapting it to their specific work contexts. Embracing new ideas calls for a sharing of new ideas. And quick wins motivate everyone to continue being agile learners.

• Get Cross-Functional Insights

Sometimes it needs the catalyst of a cross-functional perspective to jog our thinking. While not everyone has the luxury of meeting cross-functionally, there are some teams that do. Encourage them to share insights back with their functional teams to keep the cross-learning momentum going.

• Get Managers On-Board

Encourage managers to leverage touchpoints with the team for something new. Even if it does not directly relate to your immediate line of work. For instance, maybe a team member discovered a quick, free AI tool that helps reduce effort. Encourage managers to recognize team members who share.

• Make Use of In-person Meets

Have follow up sessions for online learning – self study followed by with face to face Q&A sessions. Let employees share their questions and give everyone a chance to respond. This drives learning and exchange of ideas that can trigger further good ideas.

• Reward Fun and Games!

Fun is not a bad word. Have learning games – leverage your company meets/ townhalls for a bit of fun and games that tickle people’s ability to think. Have a trivia slot where you can have quizzes in which teams can take a stab at winning. Public recognition is a big motivator.

For those of you wondering if this sounds very far-fetched given the reality of your company meets, this doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, just a quick 2 minute quiz on something employees should know and may not know. You can encourage managers to do this is smaller teams too.

• Encourage Employees to Be Kind to Themselves

Becoming an agile learner will not happen overnight. Remind learners to evaluate each mistake as an opportunity to develop the skills necessary to become an agile learner. In my organization, leadership constantly encourages us to fail fast and learn fast. It works.

• Bust Age-related Myths

Remember how the pandemic disrupted work and brought L&D into focus in a way no one anticipated? With teams scrambling to find new ways of working, there was an urgent need to train everyone on the changed modality of working – right from business leaders to front-line staff. And everyone, regardless of whether they were baby boomers, gen Y, X, ?or Z learnt to work remotely, and highly successfully at that.

What we all did was demonstrate astonishing learning agility in the face of uncertainty and disruption. Employees thought on their feet and every team did whatever it took to make remote learning work, learning the required technology on the go, ensuring seamless communication, teamwork and collaboration. What it taught us is that anyone can learn anything at any time. Well, it shouldn’t have to take a crisis for us to realize that deep down, we all do have the capacity to demonstrate learning agility. Share success stories of your teams’ learning agility in the past to inspire them for the here and now.

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Conclusion

As L&D professionals, we need to plan on encouraging learning agility and giving pointers to our teams on how to flex this muscle. While we may not always need to build large scale learning programs on this topic (although microlearnings can be a winning strategy!), what you do need is to inspire your teams to learn. Because the best of your carefully crafted learning experiences are bound to fail if learners don’t feel like learning. While your organization may or may not have a very evolved learning culture, you can be the catalyst for change. Sprinkle challenges into your trainings, provoke learners to think (by providing meaningful thought-proving problem solving opportunities), immerse them in real life situations (scenario-based trainings), get them motivated through the desire to win (gamification) etc.- all of these can all add up to developing this ability. (More in the next post on this topic!)

Sometimes, all it takes to set the ball rolling is messaging to learners to step out of their comfort zone and enter the learning zone and now being the time to improve their learning agility.

Want to enhance your learning agility through training? Read the next part of this article for practical suggestions and best practices.

What are some of your informal best practices to encourage/develop learning agility in your organization? I would love to hear from you!

#LearningAgility #Training #ProfessionalDevelopment #FutureofWork #Upskilling #CareerDevelopment #article