A recent article from the World Economic Forum (the Davos folks) examined an OECD study of how well countries are preparing students for the workforce. An interesting result is that Singapore tops the list when it comes to collaborative problem solving skills among 15-year olds, a key metric in the study.
What does this mean? What’s the impact of having students develop the ability to work together to solve complex problems? Well, it’s one data point suggesting that Singapore’s educational changes of the last 15 years may be showing results. Back in 2002 the Singapore government proposed a strategy to develop a more creative economy, leading to changes to primary and secondary education that shifted away from “teacher talks, everyone writes it down” and toward a more collaborative style of learning, with an emphasis on critical thinking and problem-solving skills rather than memorization. Yes, Asian countries have often been at the top of the list for cognitive skills like math, but the ability to put those skills into practice, using “soft skills” like teamwork, has always been questionable.
The value of a collaborative approach to education is obvious for a small country like Singapore. Since you don’t have many people in your talent pool, you cannot wait for individual “rock stars” to emerge, but instead need people to combine their talents in such a way that the end result of, say, five people working together is greater than if those five were working individually. The study’s results suggest that Singapore may be developing that skill in its population, which not only has a business effect but can also enhance areas like arts and culture, philanthropy, and more.
So…what does this mean for you as a leader?
Here’s the thing: if the country spends years teaching students a new set of hard and soft skills, and then they come to your company and you tell them, “forget all that, just work the way we have always worked,” then you are wasting all that education. When your new employees are used to working in a team, and you tell them “your job is to sit against the wall in meetings for 20 years until it’s your turn to talk,” then not only are you missing out on their abilities, you’re snuffing out their enthusiasm for the future. If your fresh grads bring a new set of skills, you should be looking for a way to use those skills rather than just conducting business as usual.
What if you don’t adapt? What if you have people come in with skills they expect to use, and then you don’t let them use them? In the short term you may just be wasting those skills, but in the long term you are likely to lose those people from your talent pool. Why? Because these days, they have other options. They can link up with other likeminded people and start their own company. They can freelance. And of course, they can emigrate; talented people in Asia have shown they are willing to relocate to places like Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US, if it means they can have a more fulfilling professional life; Channel News Asia reported last year that 6% of Singaporeans, for example, live abroad, a much higher figure than other developed countries. You may not just lose people to another company down the street, you may lose them to another country entirely.
So as you look at how your organization works, ask yourself if you are prepared to take advantage of the skill set that today’s new employees bring, which may be very different from what you brought when you started. Do you make it easy to collaborate? Do you encourage innovation and risk-taking? Are people comfortable speaking openly with others in the company, or with clients? Are you leading like a dictator, who usually gets the minimum from people, or are you leading like a sports coach, who tries to get the best from everyone?
It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that successful leaders look at what got them to where they are and decide that everyone should work the same way they did, since it obviously was good enough for them. The reality is that today’s new employees bring a different set of skills to a different kind of environment, and leaders need to adapt the way their organizations work if they want to get the full value of their incoming talent.