Adult Development and OD Practice

As an accomplished learning and development professional, you’re really good at assessing performance needs and designing and delivering learning to improve performance. But sometimes: 

• What you’re used to doing isn’t working - at any point in the competency cycle.
• When you attempt to assess performance needs, you find that individual performance isn’t only a competencies issue.
• Despite delivering a learning program, performance doesn’t change.

The disruption related to the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us to rethink how we approach learning and development. 

It’s very likely you're experiencing volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) working conditions. Change is needed, yet in VUCA conditions predicting outcomes is unreliable as things can be hazy and move very quickly. The ordered, predictable processes of continuous improvement and planned change are insufficient. The opportunity in VUCA is to put on some new glasses and look at a systems learning approach to performance issues.

The authors' experiences related in this article suggest that traditional ways of responding to change are inadequate for navigating the volume of shifting VUCA demands. Something more is needed, something in addition to skills training, to support people's capabilities to respond and build their adaptive capacity.  The article, while written for organization development practitioners, suggests that developmental theory holds insights that can significantly improve approaches to performance in complex environments. Adult development suggests that some of what’s needed in changing conditions is an expanded ability to make meaning from and respond to events and people.

The new mindset being called for is the ability to be an explorer of ambiguity and emerging complex conditions. The new demand is to develop ourselves, and add to our approaches for change so that we can respond more effectively to the extraordinary issues facing today’s leaders, organizations and communities. In the article you can easily replace OD practitioner, with learning and development practitioner as both are engaged in supporting individual and organizational performance.

Tags:  leadership  mental health  OD  organization development  VUCAresilience