Qualities Employers Value: Novel and Adaptive Thinking

Aside from your academics, there are significant social and non-academic aspects of college that help prepare you to make the transition from college to the workplace.  Coincidentally, these are many of the same qualities forward-looking employers seek in job candidates.  This is the first in a series discussing the qualities you want to demonstrate in your resume´ and in interviews.

Some call it creative thinking others thinking differently. But recently I came across Future Workplace Skill 2020 based on research conducted by the Institute For The Future/The Apollo Research Institute that used the phrase novel and adaptive thinking. (Here’s a link to the report to read more. I highly recommend you do.) It struck me as the better way to describe what employers need from their employees to compete in today’s fast-changing global economy.  Specifically, forward-looking employers are looking for job candidates who can demonstrate a penchant at thinking and coming up with solutions that go beyond what is expected or as the study defined it, role or rule-based. In other words, people who know how to navigate the WHAT IF question or the unknown future.

For those of you who are Breaking Bad fans, Jesse’s electromagnetic solution to wipe out a computer hard drive stored in an impenetrable truck is novel and adaptive thinking.  Sure he, Walter and Mike could have just stolen the computer. But these guys don’t play by the rules.

But let’s take this quality into today’s workplace reality.

David C. Novak, the CEO of Yum Brands likes to hire people, “who are analytical and can also be creative enough to come up with the ideas and galvanize the organization around a direction that’s going to take us someplace that we might not have known we could go in. You want someone who is whole-brained.” Jarrod Moses, founder and chief executive of the United Entertainment Group, a marketing agency believes, “…that hiring someone from an arts program in some cases is a lot more beneficial than hiring someone from a business program.” He goes on to say, “They think differently. I’d rather teach somebody about business than try to educate them about art or music or theater. You can’t really do that because it’s all personal taste and style. If somebody is smart, they can learn business. If they can apply creativity to it, that’s where we’re successful.”

There are career paths/industries that value novel and adaptive thinking. Business consultants are hired because they demonstrate analytical skills, outside-the-box thinking and exceptional problem solving and presentation skills required to maximize profits by changing the thinking of "we have always done it this way" management.

Organizations from banks to retailers to large industrial operations are constantly searching for ways to improve efficiency. You need to look no further that Wal-Mart to see how novel and adaptive thinking created a just-in-time-inventory system that revolutionized how products went from manufacturer to distribution center to selling floor.  Creative thinking drove the solution. Technology executed it.

And from my first-hand experience leading an organization focused on health care information technology, it took novel and adaptive thinking (not technology alone) to break the medical record paper paradigm and move to electronic health records.

What this mean to you in the hiring process.

I mentioned technology above because colleges are being asked to focus more on science, technology, engineering and math to help students compete in the global economy.  I want all liberal arts and humanities students to forget what they’ve read. Stop thinking you will never find a career or job because you are not working towards a degree in those subject areas and don’t plan on going for an MBA.  There are plenty of these smart, well-educated people inside organizations who are taught to think by the rules.  What business leaders complain about is their inability to find people who can answer the What Ifs. 

Students who graduate with a degree in liberal arts and the humanities, who study English literature, philosophy, history, sociology for example have learned to ask open-ended questions, be curious, work with concepts/see the big picture and use novel and adaptive thinking to explore the What Ifs.  Did you know that Steve Jobs openly acknowledged how studying calligraphy —not computer science— led him to design the Mac interface?

When thinking about you career and the job you want, you need to identify how you have used novel and adaptive thinking to solve problems. Have you:

• Put together an argument for a debate?
• Debugged a computer program?
• Dealt with a difficult customer working a summer job?
• Created a plan to manage your budget to keep you going until the end of term?
• Developed a strategy to reach the next level of a computer game?
• Started a business in high school or college?
• In a design engineering class, created a product to solve a specific business problem?
• Won a design award?
• As a student teacher, been faced with student who acted out in class? How did you handle it?

What story can you tell employers about this highly valued quality you have?