If your employees won’t need pressure-coping skills, imagination to innovate, ability and fortitude of character to prevail against adversity, tenacity to stay the course and persist because it is the right thing to do, then you can do with perfectly adjusted individuals who grew up in Brady family idyllic environments, needing nothing, wanting nothing and therefore not needing to struggle, negotiate or finagle to survive.

Otherwise you need people with all or some of the skills above. Where and why they learn them?

There are 2 schools: Family (home, extended family, church, etc.); and schools proper (all levels).

A healthy, balanced, complete family does take good care of their kin. This may include games (simulations) of situations where one has to be creative, even patient and persistent to win. They surely help to develop the children. Needs are satisfied and there are no reasonable ‘wants’ left unattended.

Schools surely teach their science well. A well rounded, well-educated graduate is prepared to work well with other graduates. They have a common language; they share understandings, dos and don’ts. They play very well all the items on the table. But what about items not in the table (off the wall, out of the blue, from out of bounds, out of the box, etc.) and not in the books?

Problem is that one can only learn to swim in the water. For someone who never experienced, the teachings about dealing with new situations, new environments, etc. will not help when thrown in a pool.

We learn because… we have to. When the best answer is creative, intuitive, gutsy, risk-embracing, surprising the competition with a completely new approach, when they need to negotiate with street-smart people… school is of little help.

A happy family did not normally prepare you to persist on an adversarial, demotivating, harsh environment, such as it is required in most companies at one point or another, as the result of harm done to it by self, competition or regulation. One become really good at what he/she needs to learn to… survive.

Good families and good schools often produce what they aim to: happy, almost ‘perfect’ people that had a relatively easy life. Those are not the soldiers you need to win the battle that the Marketplace often turns to.

The most prestigious law firms have hundreds of ‘white shoe’, Ivy League graduates, but when they need to win in Court, they hire outside litigators. Why? The outside litigators are the ones that do not have a Harvard Law Degree, but they are street smart, creative, persistent to the point of obsession. They are not as ‘fortunate’ as their big law firm peers, as they come from more modest and often ‘imperfect’ backgrounds. They are fighters, they win.

Adversity, especially on the forming early years, provides the need for people to learn the skills they will need to win. If you need those in your Team, hire them.

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