The ability to learn and adapt

- One of the clearest signs of a high potential employee might surprise you, it's called learning agility, which is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do. Having a talent for figuring it out, good news is you could develop it and it's worth doing. So research from Korn Ferry shows those with high learning agility are 18 times more likely to be identified as high potential employees and twice as likely to be promoted. Improve your ability to figure things out with the figure-it-out figure eight. A framework for increasing your learning agility. Let's go through it, first, be learning intentional, meaning, recognize when it's necessary to learn and have a plan for how to learn. This is meant to create excitement around learning. For example, say you've been tasked with marketing a new product strictly online with a small budget, you soon realize what you learned on those huge budget launches doesn't apply. And humbly admit, you probably don't know enough about this approach to execute it successfully. So you create a learning plan inspired by curiosity and a growth mindset, including studying other successful online only launches, and attending an interesting digital marketing conference. Now inject more data and analysis into your learning plan by increasing your observational powers. Gather a variety of data, analyze it to spot trends and patterns. Identify and challenge assumptions that aren't serving you well. Commit time to understanding your customers, competitors or your own organization to help inform your course of action. Then add another layer of discipline by learning from past experiences. Successes, and mistakes, identify similarities and differences between past and present experiences, reflecting on both to make sense of your new situation, to frame the new challenge and to inform what to do next. To practice this skill, several clients of mine have success lunches, opportunities for managers to share project successes so others can reapply. They also have failure parties, gathering to celebrate failure and what was learned from it. You've now gathered a lot of information. Return to being, learning intentional, planning out what you still must learn. Then open up to open-mindedness. Reflect on everything you've learned with an open mind. Further shape your point of view by discussing opinions different from yours, while listening for understanding, not for convincing others. Be ready to unlearn, to ditch perspectives and ideas that are no longer relevant. Be open to new approaches and experimentation. After all, experiments are just practice runs in open-mindedness. Regarding the solution you're trying to develop, ask, how else might I approach this? Instead of having a hammer and seeing every problem as a nail, access the toolbox of potential solutions that have emerged, then pick a solution to execute. And lastly, embrace uncertainty. When the path ahead isn't clear, it's easy to freeze up, do nothing. Instead, acknowledge uncertainty sitting next to you in the co-pilot seat because guess what? It's not going anywhere. Ever. Write down, what about the uncertainty you face that makes you nervous? Then circle only the things you can control. Be okay with not having all the answers. Believe in your ability to figure it out as you go. Adjusting your approach to adapt to the situation, having patience and empathy for the learning process and mistakes made. It's about being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Note that the figure eight framework works in a continual virtuous loop. You start by being learning intentional, fueling your learning through increased observational powers and analyzing past experiences. You return to being learning intentional to plan out what you still need to understand, you then reflect on it all with open-mindedness. Choose a solution and embrace any uncertainty that comes with it. Uncertainty eventually clears, change settles in and you return again to being learning intentional. So get better at figuring things out with this figure eight and good things will figure into your future.