Testing, testing, testing. Our educational system, as well as the hiring system for business, is based on doing well on tests. The tests our students must excel on are solitary affairs - but almost all tasks in the workplace are collaborative. Our system seems to be exactly bass akwards.
"the link between, say, I.Q. and job performance is distinctly underwhelming. On a scale where 0.1 or below means virtually no correlation and 0.7 or above implies a strong correlation (your height, for example, has a 0.7 correlation with your parents' height), the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success is between 0.2 and 0.3. "What I.Q. doesn't pick up is effectiveness at common-sense sorts of things, especially working with people," Richard Wagner, a psychologist at Florida State University, says. "In terms of how we evaluate schooling, everything is about working by yourself. If you work with someone else, it's called cheating. Once you get out in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people."
Read more: The Talent Myth Malcolm Gladwell
