Some of the Research Behind Futures Forge

What Science Tells Us About Learning & Performance

For decades, academic and industry research have aligned on the core attributes and skills that lead to the best career outcomes for any complex job. These skills are consistent across industries and job functions. Yet most college students graduate without significant training in most of these skills.

The curriculum, methodology, and ethos behind Futures Forge are based on decades of research and our own experience running businesses that hire and train highly talented employees out of college. The research we have conducted has taught us four primary points:

  1. As shown consistently by academic research, a small number of key skills and attributes are highly predictive of job performance, career growth, and success in life beyond income, including health and happiness--some of these can be taught, and some cannot

  2. Executive leaders are consistently struggling to find recruits with a key set of skills and attributes that largely align with the skills identified by academics

  3. The high-value jobs of the future will require abstract, complex skills that are more important than the specific technical skills learned for basic competency at entry-level jobs

  4. Conventional education is teaching few of these skills

Key Attributes Matter Most

Prof Frank Schmidt’s 100-year meta-study on selection methods for employment launched our journey to understand how different attributes contribute to job performance and career success. We found that the field of Organizational Psychology has very consistently shown which attributes, skills, and other measurable aspects of a person matter most, and which don’t matter at all, in predicting future job performance and career success.

We identified six attributes that stand out: employees who excel in these six attributes perform much better in almost any job (especially complex jobs) than those who don’t. These attributes can be measured in individuals, and their impact on job performance is well-established. They can also be improved. Our Foundational Leadership Course focuses most of its effort in helping students quickly develop these attributes.

Business leaders will intuitively understand the value of these attributes in employees, venture capitalists will understand their value in entrepreneurs, and college graduates will be familiar with the fact that their college experience lacked any focus on developing these.

Six Key Performance Attributes

  1. Grit

  2. Personal Integrity

  3. Autonomous Motivation

  4. Conscientiousness

  5. Adaptability

  6. Emotional Intelligence

Directly Measuring Performance Impact

Schmidt’s paper (and many others) demonstrate that these key attributes directly account for substantial differences in job performance in any job—particularly high-complexity jobs. Each attribute can be directly measured, and those with high scores are more productive and earn more at work. They also learn faster, and retain more information, longer.

Our assessments of student attribute strength use the same scientifically validated tests that are used in the academic world: upon learning their strengths, students at Futures Forge will have a clear, direct path to improving their future job performance and career success.

The attributes that students develop at Futures Forge each account for between 5% and 13% of additional measurable job performance beyond the impact of general mental ability (GMA, also called “cognitive ability” or simply “intelligence”). Improvements in these attributes provide the most substantial, directly measurable boost in job performance that science has been able to find.

Note: the traits “adaptability,” “motivation,” and “grit” do not show up directly in Schmidt’s paper. “Adaptability” is a combination of the personality traits, “openness to experience” and “emotional stability.” “Motivation” is measured in Schmidt’s paper as “interest” in the job, and its impact is also studied elsewhere. “Grit,” made famous by Angela Duckworth, has been shown across many studies to positively impact long-term job performance.

  • Hunter, Schmidt. “Quantifying the Effects of Psychological Interventions on Employee Job Performance and Work-Force Productivity,” 1983.

    Rafilson, “Development of a Standardized Measure to Predict Employee Productivity,” 1988.

The Impact of General Mental Ability

General Mental Ability (GMA or “cognitive ability”) has the single largest impact on job performance. In his meta-study, Schmidt finds that variation in GMA accounts for 65% of all variability in job performance. In more complex jobs, the explanatory power increases to 74%. There is no evidence among hundreds of peer-reviewed studies that, among adults, it can be improved, so we recruit for it.

Nearly every tertiary education institution or job recruits on GMA, though many do so in indirect ways. GPA is so highly correlated with GMA that, when GMA is known, GPA provides zero additional predictive value on future academic or work success.

Though controversial among the public, the clarity and impact of GMA are not at all controversial among researchers. Across nearly any measure of success (academic performance, job performance, productivity, income, even health), GMA has substantial positive predictive power, and every dataset’s results are made stronger by accounting for it. It can be accurately measured: standard IQ tests such as the Ravens Progressive Matrices, Lorge-Thorndike test, ASVAP, etc, effectively predict the effect of GMA in these studies and highly correlate with each other.

Despite popular detractions, the SAT, PSAT, and ACT highly correlate with these IQ tests. They are therefore highly effective proxy measurements for GMA. Though there is a very large SAT prep sub-industry, a “good” improvement in score is only 30 points out of 1600.

IQ tests and the SAT/ACT suffer from social pressure because some people are uncomfortable with the fact that groups with wealthier parents or those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds perform better. When controlling for dual-parent households, access to early childhood education, early nutrition, and other developmental factors, these differences disappear. That is, research shows that differences between different groups perform differently primarily due to variations in the quality of early childhood brain development, rather than any natural genetic variations between groups, or inherent flaws or biases in the tests.

  • Schmidt, 2016 (also Hunter & Schmidt, 2008)

    Frey M.C., Detterman D.K. Scholastic assessment or g? The relationship between the scholastic assessment test and general cognitive ability. Psychol. Sci. 2004

    Koenig K.A., Frey M.C., Detterman D.K. ACT and general cognitive ability. Intelligence. 2008

    Beaujean A.A., Firmin M.W., Knoop A.J., Michonski J.D., Berry T.P., Lowrie R.E. Validation of the Frey and Detterman (2004) IQ prediction equations using the Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scales. Personal. Individ. Differ. 2006

    Hambrick, D., Charbis, C., “Yes, IQ Really Matters: Critics of the SAT and other standardized testing are disregarding the data.” Slate, 14 April 2014.

    Mayer, John D, “We Need More Tests, Not Fewer.” The New York Times, 11 March, 2021.

    Coyle T.R., Pillow D.R. SAT and ACT predict college GPA after removing g. Intelligence. 2008

    Sackett P.R., Kuncel N.R., Beatty A.S., Rigdon J.L., Shen W., Kiger T.B. The role of socioeconomic status in SAT-grade relationships and in college admissions decisions. Psychol. Sci. 2012

    Powers D.E., Rock D.A. Effects of coaching on SAT I: Reasoning test scores. J. Educ. Meas. 1999

On the Mutability of Key Attributes

For decades, many academics believed that these key attributes were generally immutable in adults. Traits such as one’s conscientiousness and adaptability were considered fixed personality traits that did not change much—if at all—during adulthood.

New research in the 21st century has shown that this is simply not true. It also defies common sense: those who go through Army Boot Camp come out with greater conscientiousness, adaptability, and grit. People become more resilient and adaptable with mindfulness training. Personal integrity improves through strong coaching and psychotherapy, as well as certain experiences of “awakening.”

These two decades of research have demonstrated that these attributes can be significantly improved. The impact of interventions is greatest among children, but significant changes can be made in adults—especially young adults.

For all of these attributes, improvement has been shown through essentially the same process:

  1. Teach the student how the attribute works, and what behaviors demonstrate the attribute

  2. Clarify the value of the attribute to the student

  3. Exercise the attributes in real-world applications

  4. Provide feedback, coaching, CBT, mindfulness training, or other opportunities for reflection and reassessment.

This process is at the center of Futures Forge’s pedagogy.

  • Hane, P., et al, “Using self-affirmation to increase intellectual humility in debate.” The Royal Society, 2023

    Gilar-Corbi, R., et al, “Can emotional intelligence be improved? A randomized experimental study of a business-oriented EI training program for senior managers.” PLOS One, 2019.

    Zhou A., Yuan Y., Kang M., “Mindfulness Intervention on Adolescents’ Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Capital during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 2022.

    Knittle. K., et al. “How can intervention increase motivation for physical activity? A systematic review and meta-analysis.” Health Psychology Review, 2018.

    Stefano Tasselli, Martin Kilduff, and Blaine Landis, “Becoming More Conscientious.” Harvard Business Review, 30 March, 2018.

    Roberts, BW., et al. “A systematic review of personality trait change through intervention.” Psychological Bulletin, 143(2), 117–141. 2018.

    Monifa Thomas-Nguyen. “Which Personality Traits Can Be Improved Without Personal Motivation?” Neuroscience News, 7 December, 2021.

    Madgison, J., et al. “Theory-Driven Intervention for Changing Personality: Expectancy Value Theory, Behavioral Activation, and Conscientiousness.” Developmental Psychology, 2015.

    Sauer-Zavala, S., et al. “Does the unified protocol really change neuroticism? Results from a randomized trial.” Psychological Medicine, 2021.

From Industry: What Skills Are Most Sought by Business Leaders Now and In The Future

As a general summary, our research found 6 core performance skills that are highly sought after by executive leaders when recruiting employees for high-complexity jobs. As a general summary, our research found 6 core performance skills that are highly sought after by executive leaders when recruiting employees for high-complexity and high-income jobs. To develop this list, we used surveys conducted by academics, NGOs, and firms such as McKinsey and PwC, as well as our own experience in hiring. We have found broad agreement in both the generalities and particulars.

We define these “most sought” skills in this way: those that are both highly desirable and very difficult to find. These skills have substantial overlap with the attributes identified by academic research. These are the skills we teach.

For example, 75% of surveyed CEOs said that critical thinking was one of the top 5 skills they recruit for, and that 70% of entry-level employees arrive with insufficient critical skills to succeed in their role. And it’s no surprise: a large 2011 study using the Collegiate Learning Assessment showed that nearly 50% of college students did not improve their critical thinking, reasoning, or writing skills at all in the first 2 years of college; after 4 years, 36% had made no improvements.

The World Economic Forum and McKinsey both conducted their own extensive studies on what skills would be most required for the high-value jobs of the future. We found that almost all of the “skills of the future” have complete overlap with the skills that top employers need now. This is not surprising: the technical competencies for a given task or set of tasks (even complex tasks such as engineering or surgery) will be ever-changing as new technology radically alters ways of working. But this process of evolution is not new. Most professionals are constantly learning new technical competencies for new tasks, and this pace will only accelerate. There appears to be general agreement that employees with the below skills and attributes will be able to learn the necessary technical competencies for their evolving careers without significant difficulty.

  • Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. 2011.

    20th CEO Survey of Global Talent. PWC.

    “9 things we learnt from our recent roundtable on ‘Preparing students for university and the workplace’ “ Eton College, 05 May, 2023.

    “These are the top 10 job skills of tomorrow – and how long it takes to learn them.” World Economic Forum, 21 October, 2020.

    “Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work.” McKinsey & Co., 25 June, 2021.

    Bernard Marr, Future Skills: The 20 Skills and Competencies Everyone Needs to Succeed in a Digital World.

Six Core Performance Skills

  • Critical Thinking

  • Execution

  • Innovation

  • Problem Solving

  • Self-Management

  • Team Activation

The Science Behind Our Pedagogy

We believe it should not stir controversy to claim that students learn much more effectively when they are highly motivated, in a peer group that matches their drive and intelligence, driving their learning, and working to achieve engaging challenges rather than being lectured to.

Futures Forge focuses specifically on helping students develop their motivation during the course and for the rest of their lives. The reasons are clear: highly motivated students perform much better in academics and work. In particular, students with very high intrinsic motivation improved their GPA by 0.51 versus those with low motivation and scored 14% better on tests of long-term knowledge retention.

Our challenge-driven integrated learning system is designed on the back of over 20 years of research on learning, particularly developing attributes and improving skills. Active and hands-on learning reduces failure rates in engineering projects and improves GPA by a further 0.5.

Finally, many studies have shown that rapid iteration and reinforcement, rather than long cycle times of studying and testing, significantly improve performance and retention. Immediate feedback on performance dramatically improves how quickly these students learn.

These techniques, together, are the core of our pedagogy. They are a dramatic departure from the typical learning cycle that students experience in school.

  • Brookhart et al (2016), Learning and Individual Differences.

    Patall et al (2010), Journal of Educational Psychology.

    Freeman, S. et al. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. PNAS, 111(23), 8410-8415.

    Strobel, J. & van Barneveld, A. (2009) When is PBL More Effective? A Meta-synthesis of Meta-analyses Comparing PBL to Conventional Classrooms. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 3(1).

    Kokotsaki, D., Menzies, V., & Wiggins, A. (2016). Project-based learning: A review of the literature. Improving Schools, 19(3), 267–277.

    Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354–380.

    Phon, D. N. E., Ali, M. B., & Halim, L. (2020). Student learning performance improvement using personalized learning feedback in online courses. Computers & Education, 159, 104009.

    Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

    Jones, B.D., Paretti, M.C., Hein, S.F., Knott, T.W. (2010). An analysis of motivation constructs with first-year engineering students: Relationships among expectancies, values, achievement, and career plans. Journal of Engineering Education, 99(4), 319-336.

    Phan, H.P. (2010). Students’ academic performance and various cognitive processes of learning: an integrative framework and empirical analysis. Educational Psychology, 30(3), 297–322.