We Talk About Workforce. We Should Talk More About Work. We spend a great deal of time in workforce development getting people ready for jobs. The work is organized around demand: which occupations are growing, which employers are hiring, what skills and credentials are required, and how many people we can prepare and connect to […]
The Pilot Is Not the Point Workforce development has no shortage of pilots. We know how to launch a cohort, test a partnership, introduce a new training model, and build an initiative around an emerging need. That experimentation is necessary. Industries change, technologies change, employer needs change, and the people entering our programs do not […]
Experience Still Matters. But So Does the Ability to Begin Again There is something that happens when we become good at something. Over time, what we know becomes more than a collection of skills. It becomes part of how we understand ourselves. We know how to solve the problem. We know what to look for. […]
The Energy Transition Is Also a Learning Transition One of the assumptions we carry about work is that learning happens before the job begins. We go to school, complete training, earn a credential, develop a skill, and then enter the workforce prepared to apply what we know. The longer I have worked around workforce development […]
Workforce Wednesday: The Culture We Carry The longer I study organizations, the less I believe culture is something we build. I think it’s something we inherit from one another every day. For a long time, I thought culture was primarily the result of vision, values, and leadership. Those things matter. They establish direction, define expectations, […]
Workforce Wednesday: Who Taught Us What Opportunity Looks Like? The longer I work in workforce development, the less I believe workforce development is actually about work. At first, that sounds like a contradiction. Our conversations are filled with discussions about jobs, hiring, credentials, wages, career pathways, and labor markets. Those conversations matter because they influence […]
Workforce Wednesday: Are We Asking Every Workforce Program to Do the Same Thing? Looking back, I can point to a handful of conversations that quietly changed the way I think about workforce development. None of them happened on a conference stage or during a keynote. Most happened after meetings had ended, when the formal agenda […]
Workforce Wednesday: What Actually Changed? Not long ago, I walked out of a meeting feeling genuinely encouraged. The conversation had been productive, the energy in the room was good, and by most measures it had been a successful discussion. We talked about enrollment numbers, credentials earned, employer engagement, participant milestones, and the next steps for […]
Workforce Wednesday: Workforce Development Cannot Be Built from the Sidelines There is a part of this work that rarely receives the same level of attention as funding announcements, labor market reports, credentials, or hiring projections, yet in many cases it determines whether opportunity actually connects with people in a meaningful way. It is the work of translation. Not translation […]
Workforce Wednesday: You Cannot Pursue a Career You Do Not Understand As June brings renewed attention to National Youth Employment Month, I have found myself thinking less about whether young people are working and more about whether they truly understand the industries we keep encouraging them to pursue. That distinction has stayed with me because, over the […]
