How to Create Organizational Sustainability Using Learning Agility

COVID-19, The Great Resignation, inflation, and the war in Ukraine have certainly given organizations worldwide their fair share of unexpected problems to deal with. With a smooth stretch of road nowhere on the horizon, how can organizations upskill their own resilience and ability to pivot to deal with the unexpected? With the future more unsure than ever, what does it take to create organizational sustainability for 2022 and beyond?

Catherine Mattiske, the globally-recognized training expert best known for inventing ID9 Intelligent Design and the Genius Quotient (GQ), says that long-term organizational sustainability comes from training learning agility. Those with the agile mindset see unexpected problems as challenges and opportunities to learn, constantly driving themselves towards solutions despite circumstances. Catherine also points out that learning agility can be tripped up by miscommunication and conflict, and can be fueled by a knowledge of learning and communication preferences between team members.

Organizations who train their leaders and employees to be learning-agile will see much greater dexterity and sustainability in the face of unexpected challenges and problems. The following are five attributes of the “learning-agile” and five critical traits for organizations to train their people to create organizational sustainability:

• Mental Agility: The ability to think critically about complex problems. Being extraordinarily curious and a sponge for new information.
• People Agility: Understanding people and having the ability to work effectively with them. Enjoying working with and helping others and valuing diversity of background, culture, and thought.
• Change Agility: An insatiable appetite for change. Being able to walk the razor's edge and live inside new and first-time situations.
• Results Agility: The ability to deliver results by the deadline, especially in critical situations. Showing top results in new and challenging situations.
• Self-Awareness: Understanding one's own strengths and weaknesses. Constantly soliciting feedback from others to get better and better.

Learning Agility can still be tripped up by miscommunication and conflict. Those who are learning-agile benefit from harnessing the skill to tune into communication and focus on how each team member communicates. This allows the learning-agile to customize their messaging to other people’s preferences, thereby greasing the learning agility wheel for maximum speed and effectiveness. The following are five processes for organizations to train their learning-agile employees to cut out miscommunication and conflict:

• Discovering “Brain Fuel” Profiles: How do you learn? Do you prefer visual, auditory, or kinesthetic?
• Discovering “Processing Power” Profiles: Once you learn, how do you process that new information, synthesize it, and make it into something useful? How does that play into your Archetype?
• Discovering “Power Up” Profiles: What speeds up and supercharges your ability to learn (Brain Fuel) and ability to process what you’ve learned (Processing Power)?
• Building Translation Bridges: This involves building the skill of communicating with others in their ideal way, optimized for their Archetype, ensuring the most effective and efficient communication every time.
• Learning Inner Genius Archetypes: For maximum effectiveness, learning which of the 12 learning Archetypes is each team members’ preference and mapping the entire team will power communication, make stronger connections, reduce miscommunication, save time in meetings, and increase personal and professional influence.