Page 213 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

HOW DO I RESPOND TO DISPOSABILITY AND CHANGE? (GROWTH, LEARNING, AND RESILIENCE)

communicate better with the people. Finally, he could use
insights from one setting to understand another: he enjoyed
contemplating how the experiences of the Maccabees in
the first and second centuries b.c. apply to today’s political
environment. Rand demonstrates not only high intelligence
but learning agility—the ability to inquire, experiment, and
extrapolate in flexible and productive ways.
Organizations need learning agility as well—an orga-
nizational capability for making knowledge productive.
Organizations with high learning agility are not only more
interesting places to work but also more profitable. Dave has
defined organizational learning agility as the ability to gen-
erate × generalize ideas with impact. At either a personal
level (our friend Rand) or an organizational level, these two
principles help people build a learning response to change:

• • Generate. Leaders who encourage learning seek new
ways to do new things. In the face of change, they are
open to experimenting, adapting, and improving.
• • Generalize. Leaders who learn transfer ideas from one
area to another. They have the ability to see patterns that
may apply elsewhere.

In a world of increasing change, a learning focus both
increases employees’ elasticity for responding to setbacks and
opens up new opportunities for growth and contribution.

Principle 1: Generate New Ideas

As change occurs in the business environment, yesterday’s
rules of thumb become outdated. When leaders encourage

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