The Importance of Preparation

The first 15 years of your life determine the next 50 years. Success comes down to the right preparation be it for school, university, career, or life. Parents know a child’s formative years have a significant influence on his or her development. But it goes further than that. It’s about establishing the strong foundations so that your child can build his or her life.

The World Has Changed

We are living in a rapidly-changing and increasingly-competitive world. It’s becoming harder to get children into schools of their families’ choices or to land that coveted job. We hear constantly that today a bachelor’s degree is usually the bare minimum education needed to secure a job.

In this new reality, education and skills are the most important global currencies. Families must adapt quickly to equip their children with the necessary skills that will help them succeed in life – in a future that we cannot readily predict. In fact, a number of the jobs that await your child don’t even exist today.

So then how do you prepare your child to face this world of geopolitical shifts, advanced technology, changing industries, emerging markets, and new methods of teaching and learning? Despite all this change – and over time – certain competencies or characteristics will continue to be valued at school, in the workplace, and in the community at large. I call these the Five Cs.
 

Key’s Five Cs^TM

Whatever your child ends up doing – teacher for special needs students, Wall Street investment banker, graphic artist in Toronto, or entrepreneur in Vancouver – he or she must develop the following key competencies or characteristics:

1. Creativity: The ways in which we live, study, work, and interact with others are transforming. Furthermore, the various challenges that we face – environmental, economic, cultural, societal – necessitate new thinking and the ability to recognize alternative ideas. Our imaginations, or more likely our children’s imaginations, are going to come up with the solutions to our problems.
2. Critical and strategic thinking: We are no longer living in a world where the answer is found in a textbook. With all the information available to our children at a few keystrokes, they must actively process that vast amount of information, filter, and sort it. Those who can take the information, analyze it, evaluate alternatives, and develop solutions will be the most successful students…and later on in life the most attractive to potential employers. Sure, you have heard of critical thinking. But I would add another skill that in my mind goes beyond the critical thinking piece. Strategic thinking is the thought process one applies in the context of achieving success. Is your child constantly developing strategies for success – in the classroom, on the field, or at home?
3. Collaboration: The success of any organization depends on the ability of its members to work together effectively. Think about your child’s football team, or your company’s IT department bringing on a new platform, or the doctors and nurses in the ER trying to revive a patient. Teamwork is crucial and your child will need to learn to work well with others, appreciate the value of diversity, and understand how to harness individual strengths for team success.
4. Confidence: Your child’s ability to feel secure in his or her capabilities, choices, decisions, and thinking is vital to his or her growth and happiness. In a world where mistakes and “failure” are shunned, you need your child to embrace mistakes and failures as valuable learning and growth opportunities. As Oprah Winfrey so eloquently put it in her commencement speech to Harvard’s graduating Class of 2013, “Failure is just life trying to move us in a different direction.”
5. Character: As the Harvard-educated John Phillips, a trustee of Dartmouth College and founder of Phillips Exeter Academy, famously stated, “Goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble, yet knowledge without goodness is dangerous.” Take for example the 2008 recession. No doubt that those on Wall Street and elsewhere who were responsible for the financial meltdown were some of the brightest and most educated people on earth. But what of their morals and ethical standards? One of the biggest responsibilities that you have as a parent is helping your child develop integrity, strengthen awareness of how his or her actions affect those around him or her, and make conscious decisions that improve the lives of others.