Learning Agility
Learning Agility
What Is Learning Agility?
- The ability to learn and apply in unfamiliar situations
- What separates high performers from high-potentials
- Only shows up when failure is safe
Putting learning agility into selection criteria changes the very questions asked in the HR committee. A discussion that began with 'What did you achieve last year?' shifts to 'What was the first thing you did last year, and where did you change your own approach while doing it?' When the question changes, the candidate list changes. Someone who stayed in familiar territory for 10 years and someone who took on three unfamiliar assignments and stumbled twice sit at the same table, and the conversation turns to whether that stumbling is a record of failure or a trace of learning.
You can only put it to use once you draw a line between it and similar-looking concepts. Adaptability is the strength to adjust yourself to a change that is handed to you, whereas learning agility is the ability to carry a lesson from one experience into the next situation, even when the context is entirely different. It differs from eagerness to attend training, and from years of experience or the number of experiences. Someone who has never taken on an unfamiliar assignment isn't low in agility; they simply have no data to judge by, so before assessing, assign a stretch assignment first to create an observation window.
That's why assessment design comes with conditions. Self-report surveys alone create a paradox in which people with lower self-awareness score higher, so it's safer to also compare them against 360-degree feedback results. Observing two or more unfamiliar assignments over 6–12 months is the realistic minimum before making a judgment, and if you lock in a rating from a single interview score, the luck of that year's job assignment gets passed off as potential.
The most common mistake in practice is confusing 'people who love new things' with agile people. If someone launches projects fast but can’t close them out with results, the organization piles up unfinished work and the remaining team members clean up the mess. Another is the moment the HIPO list leaks. For those not selected, it signals 'I’m already finished,' and key contributors are the first to leave. If you run this assessment in an organization that penalizes failure, what you measure is less individual agility than how safe people feel in the organization.
Kyungtae KimHR expert · Organizational culture and HR strategy consultant
John KimAuthor of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum ConsultingRooted in 1990s executive-development research at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the US, the concept was formalized as 'Learning Agility' by Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger in a 2000 paper. It has since become a standard concept in succession planning and high-potential identification.
Consider a hypothetical case: Company A, an auto parts manufacturer with 1,200 employees and annual revenue of about KRW 380 billion (≈ US$284,303,500). Over the past three years it promoted 28 managers. Eleven of them were sent to newly created units such as the electrical-components new business team and the Mexico subsidiary, and 7 of those 11 returned to their original units within a year. They had been chosen based on performance, so why were they struggling in a new setting? That was the open question for the HR committee in the first half of 2024.
- When the HR planning lead re-examined the pre-assignment records of the 7 returnees, every one of them had spent 8+ years doing the same job in a single plant and process. The line 'Top results, but nothing they have done for the first time' went at the top of the report.
- We added an item to the assessment criteria, 'first-time assignments in the past two years and their results,' and changed the procedure so that at the HR committee an executive must ask every candidate, 'Setting last year's results aside, what did you do for the first time last year?'
- A 90-minute behavioral interview was run for 46 candidates, probing two unfamiliar assignments each, and the 19 who couldn't say 'where in the next project they applied what they learned then' were classified as development targets, not the talent pool.
- The HR executive overlaid the 360-degree results on the self-assessments and found that 5 of the top 20 had rated themselves 1+ point higher. They were selected anyway, but each got 6 months of coaching that started with a check: did their team leaders also see the areas they called weak as weak?
- The 18 selected employees were assigned challenges outside their home functions (cost improvement at an overseas subsidiary, quality response for a new customer, and so on), and each quarter they gave a 40-minute talk on 'one judgment I got wrong this quarter.'
- A year later, only 1 of the 12 people sent to new units had returned early (versus 7 of 11 in the previous three years). When controversy erupted over keeping the list confidential, the company opened a re-challenge track for all employees, and 31 people volunteered for unfamiliar assignments.