Daily we read stories like RadioShack's layoffs that indicate the same lack of skills that downsized their industry in the first place! Are we missing solutions that exist in smart skills for an era of the brain? Still with me? In the present set-up this chain is missing skills to run a business and to communicate with people! There's a connection between the two!
Rather than rely on outmoded soft skill - hard skill invalid distinctions … why not instead… Jumpstart Your Brain for Smart Skills? Leap ahead … while status quo firms still favor hard skills … which mainly come from math intelligence and logical thinking … and while firms that lag … still exclude soft skills … connected to linguistic or interpersonal skills. We need both! And brain based practices offer new pathways to hardwire for more brainpower.
Doug Hall, a chemical engineer and well respected author, encourages business leaders to step out bolder in what he calls capitalist creativity. I call it brain based capital … or reframing the hierarchal hard and soft skills to what I term smart skills.
In his book, Jumpstart your Business Brain, Doug shows how smart people tend to use and celebrate multiple approaches to solving business problems for more profitability. Can you see that the most successful leaders out their do that and encourage employees to develop strengths located in all areas of the brain. So how does the status quo still stick it to us so often …? What about the rest of us?
Let’s learn new skills that show brain activity in many areas of intelligence. If you wired your head at work … as Doug did … with a dozen electrodes … how many areas would light up?
It only makes sense! To develop skills from multiple areas of your brain is to sharpen both hard and soft skills into smarter tools for a far more competitive edge.
In Doug’s words: “when I do math problems, both sides of my brain light up as I both calculate and visualize the numbers.” How about you? Think about the possibilities you likely miss everyday at work … all because of this false distinction that holds us back! Einstein flunked math class … and his eighth grade teacher called him a bonehead, because she measured for hard skills only and missed his brilliant use of smart skills to get to solutions in more brilliant ways.
How do you open new pathways that escape others ... by using your strengths to develop smart skills through brain based practices? What do you think?
» 50 Smart Skills Alive at Innovative Firms from BrainBasedBusiness
For years debates have raged about the values of hard and soft skills. Which are paid more? Which are most critical in current workplaces? Answers have changed radically. How so? Along with compelling societal changes and emerging markets that expand... [Read More]
Tracked on: July 14, 2008 7:50 AM | Permalink to Trackback