The origins of learning agility can be traced back to one of the landmark books of leadership development, The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job. This ground-breaking effort uncovered some essential truths about how leaders developed at a time when there was very little established knowledge on the topic. Key insights from the study included the following:
• Experience is the best teacher, particularly challenging experiences that take place on the job.
• Some experiences are more powerful sources of learning than others.
• The more high-quality, diverse learning experiences one has, the better.
• And, most pertinent to learning agility, some people excel at learning from their experiences more than others.
The fundamental insights generated from the original Lessons of Experience research have been replicated and built upon across the globe for several decades. Specific to learning agility, that knowledge has been translated into different forms of assessment (Benchmarks for Learning Agility), learning tools (Experience Explorer), a forthcoming video-based eCourse, and executive education offerings (learning agility is one of the Fundamental Four competencies in CCL’s Leadership Development Roadmap).
More recently, a new field of related research and practice has emerged called Experience-Driven Leader Development. The focus is on equipping organizations to most effectively utilize challenging on-the-job experiences as a strategic tool for leader development. To the extent that organizations can create and align the necessary systems and practices to optimize the ability to learn from experience, they can benefit individual and collective efforts to develop learning agility.