Dissect America’s
corporate strategies and needs throughout the past 12 years, sort through the
business-related research and anecdotal material, engage executives and
entry-level employees, study the best journals and books, engage the top
consulting firms and storied business school faculty and you’ll find a
phenomenal consensus on the needed competencies for career success. Though
these competencies are oriented to parents and college students, they also
provide a relevant perspective on learning and career pathing for those already
in the workforce.
Reduced to the
most basic elements, here’s the list of key competencies:
1. A
technology background or related expertise in the STEM (science, technology,
engineering and math) majors. You want to major in a liberal arts program
outside those technologies? Excellent, but make sure you get four to six STEM
courses. (Major in sociology, but add statistics, computer science, etc. Or,
major in English lit, dance, German studies, or archaeology, but pick up some
STEM background along the way.)
The actual value of the STEM
competencies is that they provide the primary means for innovation for both
business as well as the nation. They are our ultimate competitive advantage in
the global marketplace. In short, without a robust STEM workforce, we will
become less competitive in the global economy. However, without the broadly
educated liberal arts grads, including those with liberal arts STEM majors—not
mere technicians--we lose much of the creativity and intuition crucial in the
workplace where fuzzy issues and dense problems, clashes of ideas and
deep-seated ambiguities are the status quo.
2. Complex
thinking and problem solving. If the faculty in your college major is
half-way decent, the subtext, often unstated, is that your major discipline
works on the basis of a specific set of cognitive models. My undergrad history
major forced me to think big picture, look closely at data and analyze
potential causes underlying historical events. Applied to business, I found
myself with superb analytical, tactical, cause-effect and strategic
competencies. Translated into business categories, here is what one English
major learned. In the global marketplace, however, these are merely
foundational competencies. You’re going to have to constantly build upon thinking
skills. That will include the ability to evaluate evidence, to see patterns in
recurring problems, to draw adequate inferences and conclusions, to think
metacognitively and to use relevant vocabulary.
3. Written and oral communication. The
demand for communication competencies in the 21st century profoundly
outpaces that of the last century. It’s not merely the multi-lingual nature of
a diverse global world or the emphasis upon service economies and face-to-face
relations. At bottom it’s the flattened hierarchies with individual responsibilities
for every person. Thus, success now requires the ability to use communication
to bridge gaps between interdependent groups, to build and use networking
intelligence, manage relationships, and create a motivational environment that
will inspire the cooperation and contribution of others.
In this new economy, the
majority of more experienced, older workers struggle to communicate
effectively. But Gen-Yers seem to have special needs at this point. As a
warning, Arthur Levine, former president of the Columbia Teacher’s College and
now president of The Woodrow Wilson Foundation, puts it this way: This generation is not very good at
face-to-face relationships. The image that comes to mind is two students,
sitting in the room they share, angrily texting each other, but not talking.
They all want to have intimate relationships, they want to get married and have
kids, but that’s hard to do if you don’t know how to talk with another person.
4. Adaptability,
which includes the abilities to respond to and manage change, and know how to learn.
Few companies have a career ladder and few careers are linear. Instead,
employees will need to adapt to a market which is a dynamic, evolving system in
which the further you try to assess the future, the more difficult it is to
predict the outcomes. At its heart, adaptability is about the skills of change.
It implies the ability to get from where you are now to where you want to go--and
along the way, deal competently with the miserable middle between now and then.
It also implies focus, constant learning and political smarts.
Adaptability is built upon the
recognition that our world never stays the same, that dynamic change, not
stability and permanence, is constant. Adaptable people understand that experience
and work are chaotic, fragmentary, deviate from cherished values and is given
to imponderable ambiguity. Adaptation, itself, comes out of encounters with
novelty that may seem chaotic. In trying to adapt, we often have to deviate
from cherished values, behave in ways that we’ve barely glimpsed and seize on
clues that are merely fragmentary.
5. Creativity.
Most people tend to think of creativity as beautiful designs such as great art,
architectural masterpieces or the Apple iPad. The fact of the matter is that
though business always needs creative masterpieces, business needs far more
creativity and innovation in mobilizing talent, allocating resources,
developing processes and building strategies.
But the most important fact
about creativity is that at its heart it is a highly collaborative
enterprise, not the lone genius in his/her workroom. The unifying idea
about creativity, which debunks a mile-high stack of creativity myths, is that
even seemingly solitary artistic pursuits involve improvisation, collaboration
and communication. The surprising reminder for many is that nothing is
perceived to be creative unless people can communicate that insight to others.
One of the more fascinating insights I gained from consulting at 3M, one of
America’s greatest creative firms, is that a creative team often searches for
others who can communicate the value of their creation. Otherwise, their work
is dead in the water. Surprisingly, the keys to creativity are going to be
collaboration and communication, making this competency available to anybody
who’s willing. Once more: the eccentric, lone genius is the exception, not the
rule.
6. Entrepreneurialism.
The first thing most think about this subject is of a business person who
builds a business from scratch. That’s merely one very minor reflection of an entrepreneurial,
adventuresome spirit. A more generic perspective of entrepreneurialism includes
the ability to take initiative and risks in order to put new ideas into play.
In short, it’s finding useful and/or profitable solutions to problems.
Furthermore, in today’s world the entrepreneurial person regularly rebuilds his
job and career in order to adapt to business needs or change jobs.
Entrepreneurialism is tightly
related to creativity, especially to its communication side. A study by
Hargadon and Sutton showed that the entrepreneurial process was remarkably
similar across all companies. It included the ability to capture good ideas,
keep the ideas alive, imagine new uses for old ideas, and put promising
concepts to the test. One of the fascinating things we know about entrepreneurs
is that they are good “noticers.” The Wall Street Journal’s Shellenbarger,
for example, writes that entrepreneurs notice “unmet needs and ways to fulfill
them.”
What’s most obvious about this new competency set is that
a high school degree gets you nowhere, that a bachelor’s is merely foundational
and that success in the new economy will require constant learning and growth. Initially,
you might think the academic portion of these demands to be a bit much. I’ve
found that a typical liberal arts bachelor’s degree, requirements, major and
all, provides space for meeting these basic expectations. However you read this
blog, don’t miss the point that these competencies form the backdrop, indeed, the
new normal for career success. So, go on about the business of acquiring and
honing these skills, regardless of where you are in your career.
Flickr photo: city college
