I'll bring it up to the modern world eventually. Promise.
I talked about the development of a warrior class. At the beginning, it was fairly easy to join. Everyone was at risk, and if you demonstrated you were better at fighting than someone else you were in. But then the barriers start to appear. You have to train for a very long time to be good with a sword. You need armor. You need a horse strong enough to carry the weight of an armored person, and specially trained so it doesn't shy at battle.
Now, suddenly, the only people who can join are people who have access to those things. Unless you're born to it or very lucky, you're SOL.
And it could be that someone who's great-great-great grandaddy was fantastic as a fighter isn't. Or that the child of a farmer has the potential to be the best swordsman in the world. But if you don't have the right access and the right training, it doesn't matter. (On a side note - this is why guns have been a bit of an equalizer. When the only way to fight was to train your entire life with a sword, you're probably going to get slaughtered if you revolt. But a gun? A gun is something anyone can shoot. Even women and children. And a woman has the same range as anyone else shooting that particular gun. There's differences in terms of how much ammo you can carry and other things, but those differences are not near as large as the differences that came from fighting with swords.)
Still, fighting skill is fairly obvious to see. But what about those other skills I mentioned? Field sense? Administrative ability? Strategic thinking?
It's kind of true and kind of not. If someone's never been taught how to play chess, they aren't going to be a good chess player even if they're capable of strategy. And even if they know the basic rules, unless they have enough experience they still won't be winning tournaments. Which is why most good organizations have a pipeline to get the talent they need...train the basics, build experience, see if someone is displaying the abilities needed at the next level. Tactical ability. Strategic ability.
Only thing is, being good in one of those doesn't mean you're good in both. Someone can get promoted because they're good at fighting and good at tactical thinking, but they aren't actually all that good at strategy.
And some of our strategic think tanks show that you can be good at strategy (one would hope) without being capable of directing a platoon in a firefight.
I'm harping on these hard to quantify skills because it's the kind of thing everyone says they need. It appears to be rare, hard to find. Strategic thinking doesn't just apply to the military. One would hope that CEO's are well versed in business, and business strategy. That we're paying them the big bucks not just to organize and manage their business, but also so they can come up with a winning strategy to grow their market share or address the business challenges of the day.
Then there's holistic thinking. No, not alternative medicine. It's people who think about a system as a whole, who study and understand complex interconnectivities. The ones who can analyze and identify key points quickly.
This is not something we test for, not really. Maybe, sort of, in that we generally feel that chess players know strategy (though just because they know chess doesn't mean they can craft strategies for the military. Not without training and experience. And since the rules of chess are more simplistic than maneuvering battlefield units I'm not convinced it's the best test overall. Still, I would say a good chess player demonstrates a potential capability for it.)
We generally recognize a successful business strategist...after their strategies pan out, of course. Predicting it ahead of time is the tricky bit. ;)
I'm not sure we have anything to identify holistic thinking.
And I am not convinced we have a system in place to identify people with the potential to learn those skills, a system that would give them the training and experience they need in order to capitalize on it.
I talked about the development of a warrior class. At the beginning, it was fairly easy to join. Everyone was at risk, and if you demonstrated you were better at fighting than someone else you were in. But then the barriers start to appear. You have to train for a very long time to be good with a sword. You need armor. You need a horse strong enough to carry the weight of an armored person, and specially trained so it doesn't shy at battle.
Now, suddenly, the only people who can join are people who have access to those things. Unless you're born to it or very lucky, you're SOL.
And it could be that someone who's great-great-great grandaddy was fantastic as a fighter isn't. Or that the child of a farmer has the potential to be the best swordsman in the world. But if you don't have the right access and the right training, it doesn't matter. (On a side note - this is why guns have been a bit of an equalizer. When the only way to fight was to train your entire life with a sword, you're probably going to get slaughtered if you revolt. But a gun? A gun is something anyone can shoot. Even women and children. And a woman has the same range as anyone else shooting that particular gun. There's differences in terms of how much ammo you can carry and other things, but those differences are not near as large as the differences that came from fighting with swords.)
Still, fighting skill is fairly obvious to see. But what about those other skills I mentioned? Field sense? Administrative ability? Strategic thinking?
It's kind of true and kind of not. If someone's never been taught how to play chess, they aren't going to be a good chess player even if they're capable of strategy. And even if they know the basic rules, unless they have enough experience they still won't be winning tournaments. Which is why most good organizations have a pipeline to get the talent they need...train the basics, build experience, see if someone is displaying the abilities needed at the next level. Tactical ability. Strategic ability.
Only thing is, being good in one of those doesn't mean you're good in both. Someone can get promoted because they're good at fighting and good at tactical thinking, but they aren't actually all that good at strategy.
And some of our strategic think tanks show that you can be good at strategy (one would hope) without being capable of directing a platoon in a firefight.
I'm harping on these hard to quantify skills because it's the kind of thing everyone says they need. It appears to be rare, hard to find. Strategic thinking doesn't just apply to the military. One would hope that CEO's are well versed in business, and business strategy. That we're paying them the big bucks not just to organize and manage their business, but also so they can come up with a winning strategy to grow their market share or address the business challenges of the day.
Then there's holistic thinking. No, not alternative medicine. It's people who think about a system as a whole, who study and understand complex interconnectivities. The ones who can analyze and identify key points quickly.
This is not something we test for, not really. Maybe, sort of, in that we generally feel that chess players know strategy (though just because they know chess doesn't mean they can craft strategies for the military. Not without training and experience. And since the rules of chess are more simplistic than maneuvering battlefield units I'm not convinced it's the best test overall. Still, I would say a good chess player demonstrates a potential capability for it.)
We generally recognize a successful business strategist...after their strategies pan out, of course. Predicting it ahead of time is the tricky bit. ;)
I'm not sure we have anything to identify holistic thinking.
And I am not convinced we have a system in place to identify people with the potential to learn those skills, a system that would give them the training and experience they need in order to capitalize on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment