By: Simon Kyaga1; Keith Morris2; Kiely Flanigan3
1Global Medical Lead, Psychiatry, Servier; 2Executive Managing Director, Scientific and Medical Affairs, Syneos Health; 3Director, Medical Affairs Syneos Health
ABSTRACT
This article aims to position learning agility as an emergent capability that supports the future-proofing of Medical Affairs strategic planning processes and outputs. In essence, learning agility is a set of skills, competencies, and mindsets that support our capability of “knowing what to do when we don’t know what to do.”1 Our position is that learning agility is a capability that should be developed internally and applied to the development and operationalization of strategic plans. Through the enablement of learning agile behaviors, the approach to strategic plans can be made with an eye toward ongoing reflection and updates. We define four descriptive behaviors (contextual curiosity, vision-driven adaptability, educated risk taking, and accountable learning) that match up to MAPS best practices in strategic plans and then discuss how to apply those learning agility behaviors. We conclude with future recommendations for the development and application of learning agility.
