Stimulus, Green Jobs, Re-employment: One view of

where we stand and where we’re going

Ed Morrison, Purdue University/ I-Open

Like the rest of the economy, the public workforce system is

Command and Control
adjusting to new realities.
Link and Leverage
We are moving from strategies based on top-down command-and-
control to state and regional strategies based on linking and
leveraging assets within open networks.

Within these networks we are working with a wide range of

partners: individuals, employers, educational institutions, training
providers, social service organizations

The transition will take time, and it is our job to find new pathways
to a 21st-century public workforce system.

We are seeing the key characteristics of this system beginning to

Promising Focus Areas for Transformation
Shorter Term Opportunities
Early warning networks and Rapid Response/
transition management
Actionable workforce data and information
emerge.
It will be more collaborative. It will be more open. It will rely more
heavily on networks. It will be more flexible and adaptive.
Some the strategies are already emerging, and we will be doing
additional work today to refine these strategies for our region.

Skill assessments This material illustrates some of the key concepts in the
workshop, “Stimulus, Green Jobs, Re-employment”. The workshop
Longer Term Opportunities introduces you to the transformations taking place in our public
workforce system and how open networks will drive these
Skills transferability transformations.
Flexible service delivery and training options
The challenge faced by every region: design and execute complex
Unemployment Insurance system integration projects quickly in an open environment in which no one can tell
anyone else what to do. This workshop introduces Strategic
Technology Doing, a simple way to manage this complexity.

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 As we move toward a transformed public workforce system, we will
Re-employment Pathways need to new maps. Every region of the country and every business
sector is going through dramatic economic changes. It’s easy to get
confused and lost.
Business grows after
retraining tied to new
strategy New firm,
new
These pictures will help us keep our bearings and focus on the
industry challenges ahead.

New firm, These maps are approximations. They help us deal with complex
same
industry challenges by communicating a lot of information quickly.
1 Formal
training

3
4
Here is an example of an early map. Like the early maps of our
continent, we will refine them, and they will become more accurate.
Growth
Start-up
2
Business struggles with 5
We can use these maps to keep track of our strategies and maintain
weak strategy
6
Life style
self-
our focus.
employment

Business fails or downsizes 7 Lower skill,

Unemployment lower pay
One Stops 8 Retirement employment
9
Continued unemployment

Charting re-employment pathways

These pathways are approximate. They do not represent exclusive either/or choices for an
individual. So, for example, a person might take a lower paying job (Path 7), while at the
same time pursuing a new job in a new industry (Path 4).

This map is designed to help workforce development professionals focus on the networks
that they can build to leverage their resources.

The re-employment process begins with a business saddled with a failing strategy. Faced
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with this situation, a business can opt to take a new strategic direction and develop
training programs that support the new strategy. The current workforce gains new skills to
improve productivity and accelerate innovation.

2 Alternatively, the firm can do little or nothing to change its strategic direction. In response
to market forces, the firm starts job-sharing, downsizes significantly, or goes out of
business. Unemployed workers now face several different pathways.

3 Some workers may be able to move quickly to firms and closely related businesses. This
transition can take place without additional training.

4 Other workers may decide to change their career path and complete a formal training
program that enables them to find a new job and a new industry.

5 A small number of unemployed workers may decide to launch a growth oriented spin-off
business, commonly based on skills, intellectual property, or business experience they
gained at their old employer.

Alternatively, some workers may decide to become self-employed in their own lifestyle
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business.

7 Some workers may reluctantly decide to take lower skilled jobs at lower wages.

8 Some workers may simply retire.

An early map of North America (1797) does not look quite right. Source:
9 Some workers stay unemployed.
Archiving Early America: http://www.earlyamerica.com

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 Skills
Layoff
transferability focuses on
aversion and early
the best opportunities to introduce
warning strategies assist
individuals to new opportunities in higher
companies and workers as they
growth sectors, such as healthcare
adjust to new strategies needed
and renewable energy
to compete

Re-employment Pathways

Business grows after

retraining tied to new
Actionable strategy New firm,
new
workforce industry
information focuses on
turning piles of very detailed
Training
data into high-quality New firm,
same strategies
information and useful insights industry focus on creating
that move people to Formal new options with
action training
innovative
training
strategies
Growth
Start-up

Improved Business struggles with

weak strategy
skill assessments help us Life style
self-
focus our assets on getting people re- employment
employed quickly. They help provide
each individual their own map of Business fails or downsizes Lower skill,
their options Unemployment
One Stops
lower pay
Retirement employment

Continued unemployment
Unemployment
Insurance System
Integration focuses on the
smooth transition from UI
to services

Technology underpins the entire transformation process

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 As we move toward the new system we will need to think and act
strategically in different ways. Strategy has never been more important.
Strategic Planning Strategic Doing
How we think and act strategically has changed, however.

We are moving from an expensive, linear process of strategic planning to

a faster paced and more action oriented process of strategic doing.

Strategic doing is a process to keep our conversations focused on both

where we are going and on our next steps. It is a simple discipline that is
not easy. Like most new skills, it takes practice.

Strategic doing teaches us how to deal with complexity by following

some simple rules. We learn by doing.

The process involves focusing on four questions:

1. What could we do together? This question involves mapping

our assets and finding new ways to connect them to opportunities.
2. What should we do together? This question focuses on
defining clear strategic outcomes.
3. What will we do together? This question focuses on the
commitments we will make to each other on our next steps.
4. How will we learn together? This question focuses on how we
will stay connected and come back together to revise our strategy.

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 Strategic Doing is a civic discipline to guide open innovation
The practice of Strategic Doing leads directly to a strategic
action plan. The first plan is an “alpha” plan; the next version
What could we do together?
is a “beta” plan. We can then move into version 1.0; then 1.1;
Explore
1.2 and so on.

The strategic action plan is never done. Like a good software

Evaluations Insights program, it is continuously revised to incorporate new ideas;
new opportunities.
What
How will we should we
learn Learn Focus do In addition, revision gives us the opportunity to redeploy our
together? together? resources when we find that something is not working like
we expected.
Action Plans Initiatives
We can manage a Strategic Action Plan by thinking differently
about how we organize.
Launch We use
What will we do together? workshop We will be taking steps toward our Strategic Action Plan this
exercises -- week.
compiled into a
Strategic Doing
Pack -- to move the
conversation around
the cycle.

These exercises
I. Our Strategic Outcome provide the main
II. Our initiatives to achieve the outcome components to a
III. Our metrics to measure progress toward our Strategic Action
outcome Plan
IV. Our next steps to implement our initiatives
V. Our process to stay connected and revise our
strategy

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 We have the opportunity to think in new
and different ways about how to
organize collaborations that cross
organizational and political boundaries.

Purdue University has shown in its

WIRED grant that it is possible to
manage over fifty initiatives in four focus
areas with a very small administrative
staff (1-2 people).

Purdue adopted the model of a “loose

hierarchy” to encourage innovation,
while maintaining accountability.

For more information: Contact Ed Morrison (edmorrison@i-open.org) and Linda Fowler

(lindafowler@i-open.org) These materials are posted on http://re-employment.net

All of this material is copyright Ed Morrison and I-Open. It is distributed under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. You are free to use this material for
commercial or non-commercial purposes, just inform people where you got it
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