Seven (?) Survival Skills

Yes, I'm still on Tony Wagner. It strikes me that while people in North America wake up and smell the coffee (or are woken up by the smell of coffee), an instinct kicks in to start a process known as list-making. In the past, three points sufficed to define a plane; nowadays, you need at least seven to define a theory.

Wagner's seven points for the survival of the West are:

• Critical thinking and problem solving
• Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
• Agility and adaptability
• Initiative and entrepreneuralism
• Effective oral and written communication
• Accessing and analysing information
• Curiosity and imagination

As usual, it is a hodge-podge of adjectives, nouns and verbs. But more than that, they are very useful points in a generic sense. Unfortunately, I am quite certain that these same points won't help close the global achievement gap for a very simple reason: these are the very same talents which the human race has ALWAYS needed. If a school doesn't help to teach these things, it's a bad school, simple as that.

Michael Fullan, in 2001, came up with his own list for leaders. He has five points, which may look pretty similar to you:

• Moral purpose
• Understanding change
• Relationship building
• Knowledge creation and sharing
• Coherence making

The lists overlap, but this one at least has fewer words. Again, it's pretty much something that leaders of the past ten millennia have probably needed. With Ecclesiastes, you would have to agree that there is nothing new under the sun.

Whether it's seven, or five, or (horrors, in this age of complexity) three, the essentials remain the same. You've got to find out what to do, why you should do it, and just do it. You can't do it alone; you need to be good with other people. The world has changed enormously, but the world hasn't changed much in some ways.