32 Capabilities of Highly Effective People in Any Field: Towards Defining Customer Requirements for Education Institutions, Corporate Universities, and Personal Careers

Abstract

RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1) What prevents colleges of all sorts from turning out effective people as grads? 2) What is a scientifically valid way to define those parts of it shared across diverse fields and professions? 3) What are domain general effectiveness capabilities as defined by people at top of diverse professions due to being more effective than others there 4) What distinguishes effectiveness from educatedness and creativity and 51 other Sciences? 5) How do models of effectiveness from research literatures differ from models from highly effective people? 6) How do protocol analysis from artificial intelligence expert systems and process modeling from total quality manage to get reliable and valid results from self report data not possible with ordinary questionnaire and interview design methods? LITERATURE SURVEY 1) industry reports 2 years before MBAs are productive at work 2) top ten US university grads graduate without brainstorming, teamwork, editing, political, self management, time management, influence skills essential for effective work 3) MBA and engineer grads both share an ignorance of social sciences essential handling modern technologies and an ignorance of arts and humanities essential for noticing and tempering their own self-absorbed prioritizations of self and career over societal health and organization mission 4) corporate universities have to train, re-train, re-re-train, etc. because employees fail to map capabilities and methods across domains and assignments 5) investing in psyche maturity in college, not in intellectual greatness, predicts good overall life outcomes and wellbeing, but college are organized for intellectual task not maturity development task 6) FIVE explanations for 1 thru 5 above are common: culture gap, goal gap, speciality plethora, context sensitivity, mystification. Most of these 5 can be mitigated by consensus on cross-domain capability constituents of effectiveness - such as this paper's research found. We are more likely to create effective people if we have a definition of what that is. RESEARCH METHOD 1) double stage recommendation of eminent people in 63 domains 41 nations nominating people at top of their fields due to effectiveness, then interviews of those nominated as to what distinguishes them from less effective others and from themselves earlier in their careers EXCELLENCE SCIENCE RESEARCH PROJECT, EFFECTIVENESS SCIENCE SECTION The overall project was a re-doing of Plato--seeking empirical defining of the good. 54 routes to top of nearly any field were found from 8000 eminent people from 41 nations and 63 professions (150 each for 54 different Excellence Sciences, that is, routes to top). One of 54 routes was effectiveness. 150 people nominated as being at top of their field due to being more effective than others were given detailed interviews and questionnaires based on protocol analysis methods from expert systems software and process modeling methods from total quality programs. DATA ANALYSIS 1) Thousands of statements were categorized hierarchically till 8 overall general capabilities were defined. 2) Research literatures on each category were consulted to adjust terminology to show overlaps. Capabilities mentioned by at least 30 of 150 subjects contacted were included in final model of 32 capabilities, each with 3 (total of 96) methods. A hierarchical model of 8, 32, 96, 288 dimensions resulted. Information process models of each capability were derived from transcripts. RESULTS 32 capabilities, 96 methods, 288 functions of highly effective people in nearly any field in one hierarchical model. Suggested uses include: 1) assess how effective grads of various colleges and programs are 2) assess how effective grades of leaders in organizations are 3) assess which capabilities employees and managers and leaders lack to see if provision of that missing capability solves problems at work and in career progress. 4) Testing profiles among various capabilities to specify what relative weighting of capabilities evolves when types of new challenges and environments appear.