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In recent years, one thing may have remained constant in how marketing executives approach their job: the morning cup of coffee. After that, all bets are off.

Marketing sits at the spot where all the forces of change buffeting business

collide: digital and mobile connectivity, big data, social media, emerging

global markets, new customer demands, and competition from shoestring

start-ups. In this dynamic environment, marketers increasingly are charged

with driving enterprise-wide transformation and creating measurable

value. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are defining or refining business

models and go-to-market strategies, in many cases completely altering how

business is done. To successfully lead change during such volatile conditions

— not just respond and react — CMOs and other senior marketing executives

must have cutting-edge skills.

The whetstone for sharpening such skills? Learning Agility.

Learning Agility is the ability to deeply absorb lessons from experience and

then extrapolate or reinterpret that knowledge when confronting the

unfamiliar. As Martin Schlatter, Global CMO for Wrigley explained, “The

successful leaders of the future will be those who can adapt best and fastest,

and also recognize that certain things will not or should not change.”

Learning Agility is the attribute that helps best-in-class marketing

executives strike that balance between honoring their expertise and

moving beyond the tried-and-true — the key to mastering the disruption,

complexity, and unforeseen opportunities inherent to marketing today.

September 2013

Learning Agility—the ability to garner insight from experience and apply it to new situations—is a trait that distinguishes best-in-class marketing executives. Two facets in particular, Mental Agility and Change Agility, stand out as differentiators, enabling CMOs to take advantage of new technologies and data, capture new markets, and lead enterprise-wide transformation efforts. CMOs can not only assess and interview for Learning Agility when hiring, but also develop this crucial attribute on their teams.

The perspectives of a CFO master classby Michael O’Callaghan and Chris CampbellBy Caren Fleit, Peri Hansen, and Kim Butler

The Agile CMOLearning Agility gives an edge to marketing executiveswho now operate in a world of constant change

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Understanding Learning Agility

Learning Agility is founded on two streams of research into leadership

success and failure. Over twenty years of global research and practice by

Lominger and Korn/Ferry International, study after study has proven that

leaders’ success depends on their interest in seeking out diverse new

experiences, drawing varied lessons from

them, and then integrating those insights

when facing their next challenge. In fact,

studies have specifically shown that Learning

Agility significantly predicts long-term

performance and career success as reflected by

promotion rates and salary changes over a period of ten years (Dai, De

Meuse, and Tang forthcoming). Additionally, Learning Agility is a better

predictor of success after a promotion than educational attainment, job

performance ratings, or emotional intelligence (EQ) scores (De Meuse, Dai,

and Hallenbeck 2010).

Leaders who are learning agile exhibit the following six characteristics

(Swisher 2012):

• They are unafraid to challenge the status quo.

• They remain calm in the face of difficulty.

• They take time to reflect on their experiences.

• They purposefully put themselves in challenging situations.

• They are open to learning.

• They resist the temptation to become defensive in the face of adversity.

In addition to an overall assessment score, five factors are gauged to

determine the specific bent of an individual’s Learning Agility:

Mental Agility. The ability to examine problems from all angles to come up

with a solution. Those who are mentally agile are able to analyze a situation,

recognize what is new or different compared with previous experiences,

and alter the approach.

Change Agility. People with this ability are willing to step out of their

comfort zone, experiment, and implement something different. They are

comfortable with change in general, and managing change efforts. When

resistance surfaces, they deal with it effectively.

Results Agility. Achieves goals even in challenging first-time situations,

backed by an established track record of delivering results. If obstacles arise

or conditions change, they adapt and find another way.

Learning Agility significantly predicts long-term performance and career success as reflected by promotion rates and salary changes.

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People Agility. Skilled communicators who can work with diverse types

of people. Connections are established spanning functions, cultures, and

backgrounds. When the unexpected happens — deadlines change or

resources evaporate — they know how to keep the team motivated and

aligned.

Self-Awareness. Extensive knowledge of one’s true strengths and

weaknesses. This involves a high degree of self-reflection; sincerity around

understanding strengths and opportunities for improvement; and asking

for feedback and acting on it.

Learning Agility in marketing executives

Among marketing leaders, Learning Agility enables flexibility and

innovation, helping executives adapt and become catalysts for change

within their organization. Plotting the average scores from one assessment

of Learning Agility (viaEdge) reveals how abilities change across leadership

levels (see Figure 1) within marketing departments. Senior executives score

significantly higher than lower-level marketers in three areas: overall

Learning Agility, Mental Agility, and Change Agility.

Figure 1Learning Agility average percentile scores in marketing

60

55

50

45

40Individual contributor Manager Executive

Overall

Mental Agility

Change Agility

People Agility

Results Agility

Self-Awareness

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These findings suggest a few things. First, the challenges marketers

encounter as they move into management and executive roles are ones

that develop Mental Agility and Change Agility. Second, marketing

managers who are being promoted to the executive level are more learning

agile than their peers. Finally, it’s important to note that marketing

executives’ average Learning Agility levels — Mental Agility at the 53rd

percentile, Change Agility at the 54th percentile, and Overall Learning

Agility at the 58th percentile — fall toward the middle of the bell curve.

The 67th percentile is the demarcation for high Learning Agility. This

makes assessing for Learning Agility a crucial component of the selection

and promotion process for marketing executives, as all marketing

executives are not created equal in this area.

A recent survey of executives by Korn/Ferry found that 61 percent agreed that Learning Agility is the most important attribute to consider when promoting senior marketing leaders. At the same time, only 19 percent said their company used any form of assessment in deciding whom to promote.

Failure to screen for Learning Agility may mean the CMO responsibilities are not in the hands of the most highly qualified individual. This could prove detrimental to companies at a time when they need to become more customer-centric and better able to make the most of opportunities in a highly competitive global marketplace.

Korn/Ferry has developed three ways to assess Learning Agility. The first is an interview protocol called the Learning From Experience Interview (Hallenbeck and Orr 2013). This method assesses all five factors

plus overall Learning Agility and it is designed to elicit the degree to which a candidate learns from experiences and applies those lessons to other situations. The second is a self-assessment called viaEdge that provides percentile scores across each of the five factors as well as an overall Learning Agility score. Both are appropriate to use in the selection process.

The third assessment, CHOICES, requires input from multiple raters who have worked with the individual, and provides rich feedback geared to deeper individual development.Learning Agility can be informally assessed by reviewing a résumé or curriculum vitae. Candidates who have a “mosaic background” likely have successfully navigated new environments and are probably highly learning agile. For example, a CMO may have a track record of success across a variety of industries, corporate cultures, and

locations, including international postings or experience. Even before contacting a potential candidate, experienced executive recruiters will look for such telltale signs of versatility and adaptability. These are the indications that someone likely has Learning Agility and will be able to drive an innovation or change agenda in an organization.

In interviews and conversations, learning agile candidates will be willing to discuss challenges and failures in the context of being learning opportunities that ultimately led to new ways to influence and effect change. These candidates will exhibit an appetite for risk, challenge, novel experiences, different cultures, cross-functional interests, and working with people from diverse backgrounds. In short, the executive’s varied past reveals a broad set of experiences that can be leveraged in the next role and opportunity.

Assessing for Learning Agility

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“Agility in marketing leadership, culture, process, and content is a must to

be successful in today’s world. It is a must in today’s digital world, in which

the marketing mix has fundamentally changed. When done excellently, it

can lead to differentiation,” said Joseph Kumar Gross, CMO of Allianz SE.

Assessing Learning Agility enables executives and organizations to identify

the most highly agile individuals, or diagnose any agility weaknesses and

find appropriate developmental opportunities (De Meuse and Dai 2011).

Learning Agility in action

For marketing leaders, overall Learning Agility is a clear asset when

dealingwith complexity and ambiguity, problem solving, and making fresh

connections between divergent concepts. “Learning Agility has helped me

navigate significantly different business environments and industries, and

to help grow the businesses in each of those companies,” said Victor Duran,

Amer Sports’ CMO/Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business to

Consumer, whose background includes positions at Procter & Gamble,

Caterpillar, and in consulting. “I’ve always started by looking at the

consumer, finding the gaps in our approach, testing a few directions

quickly, and then rolling out the approach that works.”

Mental Agility — the ability to handle complexity, distill insights, and make

connections — particularly enhances a marketing leader’s capacity to

analyze and leverage big data, which has

completely changed the paradigm. Although a

valuable tool, big data can also be an

inundation of information, quickly becoming

overwhelming without the ability to draw

from it deep insights about individuals and

customer groups. “The more data we get, the more simplicity and clarity of

mind leaders need to display,” observed Jean-Marc Levy, CMO of British

American Tobacco.

John Kennedy, Vice President, IBM Global Business Services, noted that

“CEOs are turning to CMOs to ‘figure out’ big data. … It’s about really

understanding the customer, and delivering an experience that is truly

customized.” In this data-driven environment, many new possibilities are

opening up for marketing executives to connect and engage with customers

and drive the business. Marketing executives higher in Mental Agility will

be better able to sift through the complexity and uncover key insights.

Marketing executives higher in Mental Agility will be better able to sift through newly available complex data and uncover key insights.

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Change Agility, the ability to drive a change agenda across an organization,

enables CMOs and other marketing leaders to help their business globalize

(such as expanding in Asia), reinvent the go-to-market business strategy

(such as furthering an omni-channel strategy), attract an expanded

audience (such as through social media), or create a new value proposition.

“When you have Learning Agility, you face challenges and competitive set

changes, and are willing to take risks, learn new skills, and apply them

effectively,” commented Barry Judge, CMO of Living Social and former CMO

of Best Buy. Leaders who are high in Change Agility seek continuous

improvement and innovation and are personally able to flex or pivot as they

confront obstacles, such as changes in the economy, a recalcitrant business

division, or a lack of alignment among stakeholders.

Overcoming these challenges and adapting to the “new world order”

requires Learning Agility. “Beyond the standard tool kit, marketing leaders

need to have an open mind and a level of excitement about what Learning

Agility is all about,” observed Marc Speichert, CMO of L’Oreal USA.

“The world is changing so fast, leaders have to be in constant rethink

mode about how things are done — and then do things that have never

been done before.”

Building Learning Agility on the marketing team

It stands to reason that learning agile CMOs will look for the same trait in

their teams. Across a department’s generalists and specialists, however,

there need not be a uniformly high level of Learning Agility. For some roles,

a depth of expertise or specific technical

skills are more important. “The key to any

collective effort is to first build a shared

vision of the future,” said Michael Simon,

Executive Vice President and CMO for Panera

Bread. Then, “a leader must be a catalyst in

creating a collaborative culture that leverages the diversity of thinking of

each team member and then allows the team the autonomy to push and

learn together.” A certain threshold of group Learning Agility increases the

team’s adaptability and flexibility, and alignment toward goals is achieved

with more ease.

A whole marketing team need not be uniformly high in Learning Agility. For some roles, a depth of expertise or specific technical skills are more important.

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Developing Learning Agility for team members may involve prompting

them to seek new experiences, such as volunteering for cross-functional task

forces, and seeking mentors outside of their functional area. Individuals

may have opportunities to get training and

development outside their zone of expertise

and take on extracurricular leadership

assignments such as sitting on a board or

participating in an MBA extension course. The

team’s leaders also can build Learning Agility

in a marketing group by encouraging people to challenge the status quo or

engrained approaches. Creating space for “what if …” and “why don’t we try

…” in formal meetings and informal conversations lays a foundation for

Learning Agility and affirms its value.

CMOs should also look for learning agile individuals when hiring by asking

interview questions that probe how candidates have learned from past

experiences. “When I meet with candidates, I ask them to describe three

things that are working for them and three that need to be improved,” said

Christopher Stadler, CMO of IRONMAN. “I place a lot of emphasis on how

candidates define failure and challenges and how they have been able to

overcome and address them.” Steven Althaus, CMO of BMW Car Group,

pointed out how Learning Agility is evident by “collaboration rather than

managing hierarchies — as well as learning from other industries,

enjoyment of learning, and curiosity.”

Building an agile marketing team needs to be a priority for the best-in-class

CMO, who cannot drive transformative change solo. To succeed, the leader

needs to identify the most agile team members and develop their capacity to

lead change. The team members who possess these abilities will soon be in

high demand. To mitigate the “flight risk” to the competition, the

transformative CMO also must make time for coaching conversations, build

relationships, and provide talent the opportunity to drive priority projects.

This approach succeeds on three fronts: individual development, retention

of top talent, and organizational transformation.

Marketing leaders can build Learning Agility on their team by encouraging people to challenge the status quo or engrained approaches.

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Conclusion: Learning Agility as differentiator

To succeed when change is unrelenting, stakes are high, and marketing is

accountable for enterprise-wide transformation — which is the normal state

of affairs in marketing today — CMOs and other senior marketing leaders

must possess sufficient Learning Agility. This all-important trait is like a

capability steroid, building up ability across all leadership muscle groups. It

also helps executives recognize when proven methods are right, when they

need to be adapted, and when it’s time to

innovate new solutions.

As companies put more energy into attracting

the right talent and cultivating it, identifying

Learning Agility will become crucial. Evaluating marketing executives to

pinpoint this key success attribute will improve the chances of finding truly

transformative leaders, who are able to envision a new and more exciting

future — and drive the change to achieve it.

Learning Agility is like a capability steroid, building up ability across all leadership muscle groups.

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References

Dai, Guangrong, Kenneth P. De Meuse, and King Tang. Forthcoming. “The Role of Learning Agility in Executive Career Success: The Results of Two Field Studies.” Journal of Managerial Issues.

De Meuse, Kenneth P., and Guangrong Dai. 2011. “Criterion-Related Validity of viaEdge™ Assessment: Findings From Two Recent Field Studies.” Korn/Ferry Interna-tional.

De Meuse, Kenneth P., Guangrong Dai, and George S. Hallenbeck. 2010. “Learning Agility: A Construct Whose Time Has Come.” Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research 62 (2): 119-30.

Hallenbeck, George S., and J. Evelyn Orr. 2013. “Learning From Experience™ Interview Guide.” Lominger International – a Korn/Ferry Company.

Swisher, Victoria. 2012. Becoming an Agile Leader: Know What to Do … When You Don’t Know What to Do. Lominger International – a Korn/Ferry Company.

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Caren Fleit is leader of Korn/Ferry International’s Global Marketing Center

of Expertise. She is a Senior Client Partner in the firm’s Global Consumer

Market, based in New York. caren.fleit@kornferry.com

Peri Hansen is a Senior Client Partner in the Los Angeles office of Korn/

Ferry and a member of the firm’s Global Marketing Center of Expertise and

Global Consumer Market. peri.hansen@kornferry.com

Kim Butler is a Principal Consultant for Korn/Ferry’s Leadership and Talent

Consulting business, and is based in New York. kim.butler@kornferry.com

Contributing Editors:

Oliver Dange, Senior Client Partner, Frankfurt

Jacques Amey, Senior Client Partner and Managing Director, Geneva

Jennifer De Castro, Principal, New York

Korn/Ferry’s Global Marketing Center of Expertise

Amy Young, Atlanta Anne Park Hopkins, Atlanta Betsy Barrett, New York Caren Fleit, New York David Barnes, Princeton

Eduardo Latham, Miami

EJ (Eun-Joo) Chae, Seoul Elaine Dinos, Atlanta Eve Nam, Newport Beach Grace Nida, Tokyo

Jacques Amey, Geneva Jan Campbell, Princeton

Jane Stevenson, Atlanta

Jeff Hocking, San Francisco

Jeff Wierichs, New York

Jennifer DeCastro, New York Kalya Tea, Paris Kate Wright, Melbourne

Katherine Lee, New York

Keith Feldman, San Francisco Oliver Dange, Frankfurt

Patrick Delhougne, New York Peri Hansen, Los Angeles

Philiep Dedrijvere, Brussels

Richard Sumner, London Scott Coleman, Atlanta

Tierney Remick, Chicago

12 © 2013 The Korn/Ferry Institute

About The Korn/Ferry InstituteThe Korn/Ferry Institute generates forward-thinking research and viewpoints

that illuminate how talent advances business strategy. Since its founding in

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