Seven Survival Skills

One of the most important debates of society today is over who has the primary responsibility for teaching marketable job skills: schools or employers.  This is a classic “chicken-or-the-egg” question with no definitive answer.  Employers tend to decry the lack of useful skills of their job applicants, and schools, by and large, have not fully acceded to the idea that they are responsible to teach, first and foremost, critical thinking skills.

One of the key elements of the issue (simplified here) is the argument that the schools should teach students critical thinking skills and the employer is then responsible to teach the critical job skills needed in a specific industry.  Tony Wagner has contributed to the debate with his recent work, “Seven Survival Skills.”

Wagner, who describes his “Skills” as being “defined by business leaders in their own words,” submits these skills as those business leaders should look for in their job applicants:

1.      Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

2.      Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence

3.      Agility and Adaptability

4.      Initiative and Entrepreneurship

5.      Effective Oral and Written Communication

6.      Accessing and Analyzing Information

7.      Curiosity and Imagination

Wagner is the leader of “Innovative Education” in the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University.  Employers interested in this idea might start their online search with Wagner, and continue their education on the subject with CEC Associates’ Fall 2012 New Worker feature article, “Hiring and Maintaining Employees for the Rapidly Changing Workplace.”

From your experience, who do you think is responsible for teaching marketable job skills, such as those outlined by Wagner?  Other than schools or employers, what about a third option for the job: the future employee’s parents? 

Some Economics Are Required: The Health Care System Wasted $750 Billion in 2009

Most Americans (especially employers) know that their health care system needs critical attention going forward. And most Americans know that that is the reality regardless of who will be elected the next president.  The American health care system is:

• complex
• resistant to change, and
• extraordinarily inefficient.

The most important source of information on this issue, the report that is serving as the baseline on the current situation and from which the $750 billion shortfall figure is derived, comes from the Institute of Medicine (IOM).  The IOM report, “Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America,” (September 6, 2012) lists three “imperatives” for change:

1. The rising complexity of modern health care,
2. Unsustainable cost increases, and
3. Outcomes below the system’s potentials.

It is important to note that the unsustainable costs are only one part of the problem as defined by the IOM.  In fact, the report indicates that the most important need is to establish a “continuous learning system” and “a culture of continuous improvement” in the health care system. The report asserts that continuous learning is needed to assure that “the lessons from research and each care experience are systematically captured, assessed, and translated into reliable care.”

While the thrust of the report is on the need for systemic improvements, it identifies the specifics of the waste for 2009:

• unnecessary services                      $210 billion
• inefficient delivery services            $130 billion
• excessive administrative costs        $190 billion
• too high prices                               $105 billion
• missed prevention opportunities      $55 billion
• fraud                                              $75 billion

Some employers belong to groups such as the National Association of Manufacturers, who have lobbyists to make their interests known to Congress. But employers without such resources also have a responsibility to make their best interests known by contacting their legislators. (You could help by bringing the IOM report to the attention of your legislator, for example). Consider and share your ideas on how and why out-of-control health care costs affect all employers, regardless of the number of employees.  

Do You Get More Headaches than Most? Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) May Be the Cause

CEC Associates has written extensively about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in terms of employee dysfunction in the workplace. The original ACE study was done by Robert Anda, M.D., at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Vincent J. Felitti, M.D., at Kaiser Permanente. The findings of this developmental research showed that in many adults, the cause of otherwise unexplained illnesses and impaired adult worker performance is ACE.

More recently, the research has been extended by other medical professionals to include other pervasive physiological difficulties in adults. The latest findings indicate that between 20% and 40% of headache patients have endured some kind of maltreatment during their early lives.

One of the lead researchers of this phenomenon is Dr. Elliott Schulman, a neurologist at the Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood.

Schulman’s study of ACE confirmed a strong association between childhood stress and adult headaches. The report, which studied more than 17,000 adults, examined the relationship between frequent headaches and eight early stressors:

1.      emotional abuse

2.      physical abuse

3.      sexual abuse

4.      domestic violence

5.      parental separation or divorce

6.      living with an adult who was mentally ill

7.      living with a substance abuser

8.      engaged in criminal activity

ACE research is only now beginning to look more into subtle manifestations of ACE, and we look forward to the findings of additional studies of these cause-and-effect factors. How strong do you think this causal relationship is between ACE scores and headaches? What would be an appropriate way, if any, to measure the effects of ACE in the workplace? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

For more information, see the summary article from Clinical Psychiatry News or the ACE study website. For more on the impact of ACE on workplace dysfunction, see this Continuing Education article written by CEC Associates.