Five critical skills you need in turbulent times

Everyone agrees that these are turbulent times we are living through. The question is how to do survive when everything is changing so fast?

The answer is: Learn hang gliding! Hang gliding was the metaphor we used to capture the concepts of building competency to "harness the winds of change" in our graphical story of the CPA Vision. The skills identified by CPAs as the Top Five skills they would need in the future were:

1. Leadership & Communication
2. Strategic & Critical Thinking
3. Focus on the customer, client, & market
4. Interpretation of Converging Information
5. Technologically Adept

Funny how these competencies came from our grassroots work with over 3,000 CPAs across the country during the period 1997 - 1998, and yet they are more relevant today than they were in 1998. 

I was reminded of this when Tim Fish, the assistant headmaster at my alma mater, McDonogh School, forwarded me this clip. We have been having an ongoing conversation about skills students will need as they enter the workforce. These skills are remarkably similar to the research from the CPA Vision project. This is also what prompted us to create our Business Learning Institute. We wanted to create a center for the development of these critical skills and now have over 100 programs and a growing group of discussion leaders who are among the best in the nation.

Check out this clip and think about how many of these "success skills" you have and how you might think about developing them...

Jerry Kaplan, CEO of Winstar on Academic Earth talks about the five critical skills that entrepreneurs need:

1) Leadership: ability to build consensus in the face of uncertainty
2) Communication: ability to keep a clear and consistent message
3) Decision-making: knowing when to make a decision
4) Being a good team player: knowing when to trust and when to delegate
5) Ability to telescope: to focus in on the details and then move back to the bigger picture.

What do you think? Are you working on developing or perfecting these skills?

Comments

[Jason Webb]

Thanks for the article. I am a young finance professional myself who recently launched a fund in Utah and I love to read about others who did the same and made it to the top. Hope to be there someday.

Thanks and Regards/-
Jason Webb