Randy Bisenz asked:


As the general population becomes more aware of our environmental challenges and the emerging energy crisis certain words have become popular in the media. Not too many years ago words like sustainable, green or renewable would bring snickers from people who thought the environmental movement and search for alternative energy sources were just hoaxes perpetuated by those with purely political agendas. Not anymore. Just about everywhere you look in media and advertising people are talking green and sustainability.

One unfortunate side effect of having meaningful words become marketing buzzwords is that what these words mean and represent is often lost in a barrage of advertising and shallow quasi-news reporting.

The words sustainable and sustainability are powerful words with meaning that reveals great wisdom for the future of humankind. It is important that we preserve the power of these words to help us understand what we must do to provide a high quality of life in the years ahead. It would be tragic to be seduced by the spin doctors that because we put a green or sustainable label on something that we are properly addressing our long-term challenges.

Both of these words speak to the ability of something to last and endure. This means that whatever we are attempting to sustain is capable of enduring times of hardship, scarcity, or change. Something that works well during the good times but breaks down during times of challenge is simply not sustainable. This is true of every aspect of our civilization including our economy.

This is a lesson that humanity has had great difficulty understanding and learning. Our history over the ages shows a consistent pattern of our developing civilizations and establishing standards of living only to have is all fall apart as soon as conditions change or new threats introduced.

The solutions for this are planning for the long-term, which includes planning for times of scarcity, hardship and change; and investing resources like time, energy and money into these plans.

A good example of how this works is in the hurricane Katrina disaster. The officials in New Orleans had been warned that the levees were not strong enough to withstand a serious hurricane. To repair and strengthen the levees would cost substantial amounts of money and reduce the amount available to spend on advertising to increase tourism.

These officials decided to wait on repairing the levees figuring that such a storm was unlikely, and moved to spend that money on advertising instead. They figured that the increases in their economy would provide the funds necessary for the repairs in due time. In other words they traded the security that this long-term investment would provide for short-term economic gains. We all know how well this strategy ended up working.

If these officials would have invested for the long-term and planned for this “unlikely” event a huge disaster could have been avoided. Today, New Orleans would have recovered from the storm and would be in a position to maintain tourism and the local economy.

As we look ahead to the challenges posed by our energy crisis and climate change we would be wise to vigorously invest in long-term solutions to these challenges today, even if it means forgoing short-term economic gains. Such investments create whole new areas economic opportunity that down to road will benefit us far more than anything else we might do today to stimulate our economy for the short-term.

You can find our more about practical long-term solutions on the Bright Future website. If you have not visited lately come a take a look at the improvements we recently completed. The site has been redesigned with a fresh look and improved navigation. Also, we have added a brand new networking section and a forum where you can discuss our long-term challenges and solutions with others. You are invited to take advantage of our free membership offer that gives you full access to these new functions.



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John Kenworthy asked:


Copyright (c) 2009 John Kenworthy

Most people would accept that the ability to learn, and the ease of that learning, makes a difference in life. But, is someone who is more able to learn, more easily and in many different situations, better equipped to be a better leader?

Lombardo and Eichinger call this “learning agility”, and suggest that learning-agile people exhibit common traits: They:

think critically and examine problems carefully, making fresh connections with comparative ease.

are very self-aware, know and leverage their strengths effectively and know how to compensate for their weaknesses.

enjoy experimenting and are comfortable with change.

deliver results in through team-building and personal drive.

Learning agility is manifested in several ways. For example, there’s mental agility.

Learning-agile people have and use more tools for problem-solving. They use the emotional and logical sides of their brains equally well and easily. They can prioritize the urgent and the visionary and strategic issues.

Learning-agile people have results agility.

They show personal drive and can build teams. From this team-building ability they also develop their people agility. Comfortable with themselves and with diversity, they balance intra and inter-personal skills effectively. They will tend to be open-minded, non-judgmental about ideas and other people. Able to deal with and embrace change, they know which battles to fight and establish consensus when appropriate.

Lastly, they are conflict agile,

Learning-agile people know when to collaborate and when to compete. They know when to accommodate others and when to avoid conflict altogether.

Assessing learning agility

How can you identify learning-agile performers in your organization and position them for success within your organization?

A learning-agile person can be expected to exhibit success when dealing with new or difficult situations. You can expect them to volunteer for new experiences and will likely rise to informal (or formal) leadership roles in teams.

Once identified, deliberately try and move them out of their area of apparent expertise to a new area. Observe how they perform and how they relate to new colleagues, to new leadership styles, to a customer-facing role or to the back-office. Watch carefully for how they deal with different personalities and attitudes and people of different backgrounds.

Lombardo and Eichinger use a formula of diversity, adversity, intensity and complexity of experiences, combined with a willingness to learn as a formula for success. Learning-agile people will excel at:

Turnaround projects – problems that need fixing

Startups – starting a program, product, system or facility from scratch.

Cross-functional moves.

Line-to-staff moves – learning how to influence without authority.

Changes in scope of projects and changes in scale or size.

All of these experiences requires the person needs to acquire competencies rapidly through the experience, feedback and integration of knowledge, skills and abilities.

Seriously consider how you might identify your own learning-agile people. They have the potential to succeed exceptionally in your organization.

Why identify learning-agility?

Michaels, et al (2001) in “The War for Talent studies” found just 7% of respondents agreed their companies had enough talented managers! Just 3% agreed with the statement: “We develop people effectively.” Sessa & Campbell, (1997) found that a third to three-quarters of new top executives fail in their first appointment! A third of Fortune 500 CEO’s have been replaced in the last 10 years (Bennis & O’Toole, 2000; Charan & Colvin, 1999).

Such results have many causes, but one implication is that organizations have great difficulty in spotting and nurturing talent that has staying power once in key positions.

Someone with “high potential” is a person who has an open willingness and ability to learn competencies required for first-time, challenging conditions. They deliberately choose to learn and review their outcomes and make adjustments in their behaviours and skills to improve performance.



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