More and more organizations are relying on teams to get work completed and completed more quickly. The reliance on teams means that organizations are becoming less hierarchical and that management is moving further and further away from the old control and command management style, even in the C-Suite. Further, managers are developing more of a matrix set of skills. All of this means that organizations are becoming more agile.

Agility brings about more change and brings it more often. A more agile operation forces teams to throw out staid project management ideas. The team concentrates on the few items or tasks that are less likely to change by the time the team can work on them. This in turn, helps team members embrace change. One source suggests, “people should be happy to learn things that alter their direction, even late in the development process.” On the other hand, creating agile teams does involve some planning.

Using “the little gray cells” is an expression the legendary detective Hercule Poirot, created by Agatha Christie, was often fond of using. A more “modern” example of this comes from management consultant, the late Peter Drucker, “We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process…” So, if we know that we should keep “the little gray cells” active and that learning is important, what difference does it make whether that learning comes via training or development?