In his report “Talent Trends: HR Technology Disruptions for 2018,” Deloitte’s Josh Bersin identifies one of three micro-trends as “changes in the way we manage organizations.” He goes on to say that companies are increasingly operating in a network of teams and provides as an example Cisco’s move from hierarchical management to a networked team structure in which about 20,000 teams are actively working on projects. Until recently, Cisco’s HR systems were not organized around a team-based approach, but the company launched a team-based system to manage goals, performance, coaching and more.

With Bersin’s work as a backdrop, I would like to explore the use of learning agility assessments to diagnose and improve team performance. Researcher Warner Burke defines learning agility as “having the ability and willingness (flexibility) to quickly try out new behaviors (speed) in novel/challenging situations.”

Burke identified nine dimensions of learning agility: speed, flexibility, feedback-seeking, interpersonal risk-taking, performance risk-taking, information-gathering, collaborating, experimenting and reflecting. Speed and flexibility tend to be the drivers of or underpin the other seven dimensions. In fact, the Burke Learning Agility Inventory consists of 38 questions – five questions each for speed and flexibility and four questions each for the other seven dimensions.

I would like to explore seven scenarios that teams might encounter and how learning agility might help. Let’s assume that each team has nine members and that no one member is in charge. The team may appoint a leader to coordinate its work, and/or the leader role may rotate among the team members.

This team has previously taken a learning agility assessment, and members know the overall results for the team. The profiles of the various team members are attributable to a specific person. Each person has individual results at the dimension and item level and can choose whether to make those results known to the group. The team is working on a project with a duration of about 12 months.

Situation 1: Each of the nine team members exhibits a low level of reflecting. Naturally, they are concerned, realizing it as a blind spot. As they think about their past performance, they can see a history of going from project to project and making similar mistakes over time.

A training professional suggests joining them at the point where they want to reflect and asking them some questions (related to assessment questions) that they need to address. The other option she offers is sharing the questions with the group, and they can work on it themselves.

They opt to use the training professional’s help the first time and then to try to handle it themselves. In their first meeting, they look at the processes they used on the project and see some opportunities for improvement. They talk about ways they could have been more effective on this project and, in turn, on future projects. They capture what they have learned and agree to review those lessons on the front end of their next project kickoff.

Situation 2: The team overall has a low score on flexibility. When they look into the issue more deeply – at the question level – there are two areas the team is missing: They don’t have the ability to find common themes among opposing points of view, and they can’t articulate competing ideas or perspectives.

They understand where and how this weakness has gotten in their way before. They reach out to the training department. This time, the department can provide them with a resource who is capable in both those areas: either someone from the training group or another employee who has this capability and could temporarily join the team. The team goes with the second option.

For the remaining situations, I will describe it and leave it to you to solve.

Situation 3: A team is missing a learning agility dimension, and a person with that capability is looking for a team to join. (This is really a variation of the second situation.)

Situation 4: Through the performance management process or some other means, an organization has determined that a person needs to develop a certain learning agility dimension. That person is included on a team for that express purpose. It is known to the other team members, and they intend to support the person, so they understand the person will make some mistakes as he learns.

Situation 5: This situation is broader variation of the first. Rather than looking at just one dimension in terms of their review, team members look at all nine dimensions: What did they do well? Where can they improve?

Situation 6: Learning agility scores are incorporated into the planning process on a project, and leaders make individual assignments for that project based on team members’ strengths or development needs.

Situation 7: Learning agility is used as a diagnostic tool over the course of the project. When the team has difficulty, it uses the assessment to determine what is going on. Team members use learning agility dimensions as a guide to understand the issues and plan the solution.

Hopefully, you now have some ideas about how to use learning agility with teams. Next month, I will examine how learning agility could enhance performance management.