Job conditions are increasingly pushing workers into new jobs. Employees can no longer rely on others to make key decisions and are forced to make them alone and quickly. Good decisions include concentrating on the most relevant information, asking the right questions, and believing correctly that too few workers possess these skills. A survey of Human Resource professionals (SHRM) found a total 70 percent of high school workers are deficient in System Thinking skills.
In other recent studies, 45 percent of college graduates made no noticeable improvement in developing System Thinking or reasoning skills during college’s first two years. After four years, 36% made no major gains in System Thinking skills.
When these students leave school and enter the workforce, they will be unprepared for working world challenges. When managers say System Thinking skills are highly valued, applicants possessing these qualities will be in demand and difficult to find. Critical skills will become invaluable. The types of jobs and work environments evolve, versatility and adaptability will become essential to meeting real-world conditions and something that practitioners and recruiters need to test for in interviews. Developing System Thinking sets of your existing employees will also become important.
One strategy for management managers is to use pre-hiring planning tests. Individuals who score well on these assessments demonstrate good analytical skills, reasoning, decision-making, and efficiency. They often demonstrate the ability to evaluate the information value presented, are innovative, have better job knowledge, and often move up in your business. There are some tests of managerial and skilled applicants assessing hard skills.
Research also shows that higher-level management roles require System Thinking skills and the ability to learn quickly and accurately process information. Organizations that include both System Thinking and personality tests in hiring practices will have a greater overall candidate perspective than organizations that use personality or System Thinking assessments alone.
Helping employees become strategic thinkers can be done by introducing questioning techniques. Better questioning helps to visualize better and synthesize information. By practice, this process can become automatic, with the ultimate goal of transferring information to new situations and scenarios.
Some courses teach students to be good listeners, not great thinkers. Passive training does not inherently improve mental or behavioral skills. Active participation in the learning process will be more successful, providing more long-term results.
Knowledge acquired and interpreted by higher-order thought is recalled more than conventional memorization. Knowledge is easier to transfer and implement, leading to better problem-solving. Questioning becomes a vital part of teaching and learning.
