There's a familiar saying that goes: 'if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got'. It seems particularly pertinent when we’re thinking about developing future organisational capability.

We often see organisational L&D packages reflecting conventional leadership and management assumptions and practice. These days they’re more likely to be innovative, digitally enhanced and emphasise self-guided learning, but we could be heading for a problem if the skills they develop are better suited to our past than our future.

The world is changing

A useful start point is to identify, if possible, what different skills will be required in future organisations. Much of what we’re doing today may still be relevant, so let’s focus on what needs to change.

If ever there were a year in which 'change' was a watchword, it's 2020. It is not just the scale of changes that has shocked us, but the speed at which they've occurred. Learning and development must adapt to stay ahead of today’s pace of change and incorporate new skills required to be effective an increasingly complex, uncertain and fast-moving world. What do these new challenges look like?  I can’t claim this is an exhaustive list, but today’s challenges include:

• More teams are now geographically dispersed.
• We commonly work in hybrid teams combining employed staff, contractors and outsource vendors.
• There’s often difficulty with regards to finding a consensus on the way ahead because we can’t predict future events and, by association, outcomes.
• We’re increasingly impacted by innovative technology with the ability to disrupt our existing business models and ways of doing things. Do we embrace it or try to resist its irresistible force?
• We’re all swamped with data but don’t necessarily have any more insight to help us make decisions.

Do we need to change?

Exceptional leadership capability will differentiate successful companies from average performers. Others will attempt to succeed by attempting to massage traditional, but fatally flawed, leader-follower models. These increasingly won’t work if they rely on expert leaders using top-down ‘know all – tell all’ methods of command.

Implemented effectively, being agile is about organisations being and behaving differently and it can be transformational.

Agile leadership may be a useful response to some of the pressures we face. A lot of commentators write about agile organisations and agile transformations these days. Essentially the term, when applied to organisations, means organisations ‘with agility’ or the capability to adapt rapidly and flexibly to their changing circumstances. Exemplar companies combine a strong backbone of capabilities with dynamic attributes enabling them to live ‘on the edge’ of the future and rapidly evolve.  

When thinking about what skills will be required in your organisation, ask yourself and colleagues two questions:

1. Do we have a high or low level of certainty about the external environment we’re in?
2. Do we have a high or low level of consensus on the way ahead?

If the answer to either of these questions indicates you are far from certainty and/or agreement, then the capability you need shares many characteristics with agile organisations designed to combine stability and dynamism – and it seems you’re not alone.  

Research published in McKinsey Quarterly indicated three-quarters of respondents say organisational agility is a top or top-three priority, and nearly 40% are currently conducting an organisational agility transformation. Respondents in all sectors believed more of their employees should undertake agile ways of working, meaning innovative working practices incorporating physical and digital flexibility and focused on performance and outcomes.

What makes an agile organisation?

Implemented effectively, being agile is about organisations being and behaving differently and it can be transformational. McKinsey’s important 2018 article on the topic Five Trademarks of Agile Organisations, identified some of the capabilities needed to build 21st century organisations:

• They have a ‘north star’ (a guiding purpose and principles) embodied across the organisation.
• They work through a network of small, empowered teams.
• They use rapid decision and learning cycles.
• They have dynamic people models based on a community, passionate about working cohesively with common intent.
• They use next-generation enabling technology.

What skills will we need?

Let’s break this down into some progressive capabilities L&D needs to focus on.

1. Creating common purpose
   Supporting leaders to develop and reinforce a clear sense of how an organisation intends to create value for all its stakeholders and finding effective ways to help people translate strategic direction into realistic and actionable outcomes.
    
2. Network leadership
   As networks replace or at least enhance traditional structures, people at all levels will need capability to lead and coordinate, but not attempt to control, the collective output of networks of dispersed teams, working and flexibly, forming and re-forming constantly around the changing demands their mission.
    
3. Collaboration and connection
   Generating value from collaboration and connection requires leaders at all levels to focus on enabling people-focused cultures emphasising empathy, relationship building and communication skills. The generation now entering the workplace may be better adapted to 21st century challenges, but others need help to develop proactive skills to cope more effectively with uncertainty and constant change.
    
4. Planning for unplanned work
   More of our time now involves dealing with unplanned events. Leaders need to balance focus on long-term objectives with a bias for action to help teams move forwards and find a path to the future, rather than get bogged down.
    
5. Decision making nearer the edge
   Leaders increasingly need to find ways to ensure decisions are made at the lowest appropriate level, even without enough information. This implies capability to know when to decide and how much (or how little) information is required to move forwards.
   
   To achieve this momentum, organisations need to develop highly-tuned situational awareness, put power in the hands of those best placed to make decisions and build trust in the process by which decisions are evaluated with the benefit of experience.
   
   It won’t happen unless people at all levels are encouraged to experiment and trusted to fail, provided they act with good intent.

How to upskill for the future

Step 1: persuade leaders the new situation demands new capabilities; highlight and get them to align on the mindset and behaviour needed.

Step 2: change won’t happen unless people see their leaders making changes. The second step is to ensure leaders role-model new mind-sets and behaviours, holding each other to account for making these changes and nurturing them in the teams they lead.

Step 3: implement L&D opportunities that support employees to develop new skills needed to succeed in the future organisation. This takes time. Remember, training is more effective when supported by self-directed and ‘on the job’ learning. Ideally, develop practical scenario-based activities in conducted in a safe environment where people can collectively rehearse and receive feedback on new skills as they are being developed.

Step 4: ensure systems and processes are re-engineered to embed cultural change. This includes performance management and reward/recognition systems which incentivise people to demonstrate new behaviours.

There’s no point in developing capabilities for the future, like the freedom to take quick decisions, only to suffocate them with incoherent processes like incentivising caution and risk-avoiding behaviour.  

Interested in this topic? Read How to cultivate agility through learning.