What Does the Fortune 500 Know?

Monday, February 11 2008

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Leslie Levine

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A few days ago, my son asked me for some help with an assignment that required a parent's involvement. Sometimes I derive great joy from reading the material that's handed out to my kids; it gives me a glimpse into a world that I rarely get to see (except when I used to sub). So I was intrigued when I was reading about "cooperative group work" and found discovered the "Fortune 500 List of Desirable Skills." They are ranked in order with corresponding rankings for 1976. Here they are with today's ranking listed first and the ranking for 1976 in parentheses:
Teamwork, 1 (10)
Problem Solving, 2 (12)
Interpersonal Skills, 3 (13)
Oral Communications, 4 (4)
Listening Skills, 5 (5)
Personal/Career Development, 6 (6)
Creative Thinking, 7 (7)
Leadership, 8 (8)
Goal Setting/Motivation, 9 (9)
Writing Skills, 10 (1)
Organizational Effectiveness, 12 (2)
Reading Skills, 13 (3)
    As a writer, I'm sort of stunned that writing is number 10. Actually, I must have been really disappointed and disbelieving even, because the first time I typed in the numbers I transposed them so that writing came in at number 1. So teamwork is the big winner and I suppose that one of the qualities my son's teacher is trying to teach. Do we take what we learn in school and apply it to our workplaces? I think so. What about the team you don't get to choose, however? Do you put in your all for those types of groups as well? You'd better, and that's probably the biggest lesson of all. Working with people we wouldn't necessarily select if given the choice can teach us so much in the long run.
    Indeed, you don't have to like the people you work with, but I think you do need to respect them and their roles in the company. It's takes some growing up to get to that point, but it's also a really good lesson in recognizing that it's okay to collaborate at work and leave it all at that.
    But getting back to the list above. Take a look and see what's important to you. Forget about the rankings if you can and think about the skills that help you move ahead in your career and ones that make your job interesting.

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Writing today inovlves teamwork ...

Perhaps what's most interesting about the list is that it treats some of these items as discreet skills when, in today's professional and private environments, many of these are actually merged. I can understand why teamwork would be first, since most contemporary forms of communication involve collaboration -- including in business, in school, and in our private lives. Considering how interactive writing and learning have become (this blog, Wikipedia, text messages), it's easy to understand that a sense of teamwork would be essential to the success of those ventures. But here's a rub -- it's also vital now for us to distinguish between all the different sources of information and the competing voices in the conversation. So it's interesting, then, that reading is ranked last. In fact, that would seem to be the skill most closely allied with critical thinking, and therefore as essential today as ever. But I suppose "reading" sounds too book-based to feel relevant to today's multimedia environment.