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In The War for Talent studies (Michaels, et al., 2001), only seven percent of respondents agreed their companies had enough talented managers, and only three percent agreed with the statement: "We develop people effectively." Other studies show first-time top-executive failure rates to be anywhere from 33 percent to 75 percent (Sessa & Campbell, 1997). During the last decade, one-third of the CEOs in the Fortune 500 have been replaced (Bennis & O'Toole, 2000; Charan & Colvin, 1999). Although the preceding results have many causes, one implication is that organizations have great difficulty in spotting and nurturing talent that has staying power once in key positions.
Previously (Lombardo & Eichinger, 2000), we demonstrated that a measure of learning agility (CHOICES®) was related to both current performance and longer-term potential. Our essential argument was that learning new job and technical knowledge is different from learning new personal behavior or ways of viewing events and problems. If people learn, grow, and change across time (and consequently develop new skills, not just enhancing what they already have), then comparing the competencies of a promising 25-year old to the competencies (success profile) of successful 50-year olds will not be totally informative. Promising 25-years olds are not just miniature versions of successful 50-year olds.
Selection, staffing, and succession planning should be a combination of looking at those characteristics that do not change much over time and can be detected early (such as intelligence) and those that flower across time as the person learns to deal with fresh situations.
For a summary of this initial research study, see the Appendix at the end of this writing.
After the initial validation of our instrument as a measure of personal adaptability, we turned to longer-term questions:
1. Would learning-agility scores predict later promotion?
2. Would people with higher scorns perform better once promoted?
3. If so, whose ratings would most likely relate to this higher performance?
4. Would there be a difference in the type of promotion that high-leaming-agile people received?
5. Is learning agility something unique or is it basically a variation of intelligence or personality variables?
Selection, staffing, and succession planning should be a combination of looking at those characterisitics that do not change much over time and can be detected early...