How to Quantify Agility in your Organisation
Due to the changing nature of the global and technological environment, organisations are constantly facing new challenges. The need for agile individuals, who can excel in these conditions, is critical to ensure success. This article explains how to quantify agility in your organisation in South Africa.
We unpack the importance of developing both individual and organisational Agility. We also explore what Agility and Learning Agility means for businesses before providing insight into how you can start quantifying and benchmarking these concepts at an individual, group and company level.
Defining Agility and Learning Agility
Agility is a broad term that is used to describe adaptability and the ability to respond rapidly to new situations. It is often highlighted as a value or goal within organisations. However, while the need for Agility is clear, there is often less clarity on how to turn this concept into something that can be easily measured or observed.
While Agility is all about moving quickly, it doesn’t reflect the effectiveness of an individual’s response to new situations and how they prefer to engage with change. That’s where Learning Agility enters the picture.
Learning Agility is a well-defined model that was first put forward by management experts Lombardo and Eichinger after decades of studying leadership performance. These researchers were interested in understanding why some leaders were able to effectively adjust during times of change, when others became less effective over time. Their answer lay in Learning Agility: the ability to develop new effective behaviours in response to changing situations, and to put these behaviours into practice.
Learning Agility can be seen as ‘adaptive performance’. But what does it mean to adapt your performance? Creatively solving problems, for example, involves developing new solutions to accomplish a challenging task. Similarly, taking on new work tasks, technologies, and procedures requires learning new methods. Demonstrating interpersonal and cultural adaptability involves adapting to the interpersonal and cultural demands inherent in an organisational setting. And being able to learn from experience requires being open to feedback and willing to adapt.
How Agile Individuals Create an Agile Organisation
Learning Agility is the X-factor that can propel organisations ahead of their competitors. But it’s not just those at the top who need to be agile; the real organisational benefits are seen when all employees are agile. When most people in the organisation display Learning Agility, Organisational Agility follows.
While individual success is a useful metric, the real impact of Learning Agility is best understood by examining its effect on the overall organisation, and comparing how your people fare against well-established benchmarks
Learn how PEP, Africa’s largest single brand retailer, uses Learning Agility to select and develop effective leaders.
How Agile is your Organisation? Here’s how to Measure it
Often, CEOs and senior leaders have an intuitive feeling about the level of Agility in their organisation, even if they don’t use these exact words. They’ll recognise individuals and teams who work well through change, who thrive on challenges and who create innovative solutions — these are the employees who display high Learning Agility.
Similarly, when CEOs express concerns about their organisation’s capacity to adapt to volatile conditions, they often sense a shortfall in Learning Agility.
While this instinct is often accurate, to really understand Organisational Agility, it’s important to assess Learning Agility at an individual level via an objective and scientific methodology.
Learning Agility can be Measured in Two Ways
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By measuring the potential for Learning Agility based on valid and reliable psychometric tests.
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Also by measuring which Learning Agile behaviours are being demonstrated based on a structured 360-degree feedback test.
From these individual measurements, team, leader, department and company-wide perspectives can be compiled.
Benchmarking Learning Agility
Group-level Agility outcomes can be used to benchmark the organisation against globally accepted thresholds. These enable you to better understand how your people fare against your competitors and other businesses.
These insights form the basis of knowing where teams excel, where teams fall short, where to development efforts and how much effort to put in.
Lumenii offers a range of solutions to measure Learning Agility and obtain valuable insights that can be applied at an individual, team and organisational level. It can be implemented and measured throughout the talent management lifecycle, including selection, onboarding, development, promotions and succession planning.
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Lumenii's team of expert psychologists regularly collaborate to share their ideas and knowledge. The latest case studies, thought leadership, and research.