The world is rapidly changing - that is nothing new. Apple (!) is meanwhile being accused of a lack of innovation ability, companies such as Snapchat that have not yet brought in any euros in turnover are collecting investor’s funds of over more than 500 million dollars (the company value is estimated at 18 billion euros), public prosecutors have to break off processes, because they can no longer deal with the huge amounts of data. That sums up only a few of the news of these past days confirming the trends of our times. Whoever wants to DO something, drives down to Silicon Valley, copies the newest trends, looks for investors in Berlin - the Samwer brothers send their regards. And what is the remaining part of the republic doing: Investments are treated so hesitantly that the ECB since the middle of last year has been levying negative interest payments on parked bank capital in order to force the banks to grant loans to companies in order to stimulate investments and thus the economy in old Europe. But what are the companies doing on their behalf? They nevertheless do not invest. The investment rate has been continuously declining for years. Instead, in 2015 record dividends will be distributed - what else should be done with all that money after all? At least the auctioneers will be happy.
Do we have the wrong company leaders, fixed on financial figures only? Are there more administrators than innovative creators in the our medium-sized businesses? How open and willing to learn are our managers actually in order to build up the “agile organisation“ of the future?
That brings us to the heart of the matter: The capacity to learn or learning agility of our executives and employees. As we have already discussed in our article of November, selection systems and promotion systems to a large extent still consist of methods that mainly measure current competencies of executives. These often result from past experiences. In general this is not incorrect, however only an (insufficient) predictor regarding high complexity and rapid speed in today’s economic life. In a study of the Korn Ferry Institute (Lewis 2013, can be requested from us) regarding performance and learning agility of managers in different companies it could be proven that the profitability of the companies with the top managers with the highest learning agility was 25% higher than that of comparable companies. However, it is only fair to say that the Korn Ferry Institute has been doing research on learning agilities for years already, and despite all scientific integrity, one usually finds what one seeks. But this is a different subject. The Korn Ferry Institute ties the learning agility to five dimensions (Swisher & Dai 2013): Mental agility, human agility, change agility, result agility and self-reflexion. Interesting in this concept are not the dimensions itself - these can be found with other competency models as well. Interesting is the focus on agility, that means to which extent somebody is able to remain agile and capable to learn within the named dimensions. Not only in his or her delicate student age, but above all as an experienced management employee who sometimes tends to believe he or she knows how the world works. Therefore, make sure to check your existing personnel systems and your executives with regard to their agility. It will be a decisive factor in the survival of your company.