Brewed Fresh Daily

Next week, I’ll be reporting to BFD readers from Kansas City at the Heartland Conference.

That’s a regional summit of Midwestern states focused on workforce development. Some 450 workforce development professionals from around the Great Lakes region will be convening.

Some of the topics of the sessions:

Green Jobs In the New Midwest Economy

Michigan’s Green Jobs Initiative

Midwest Innovation Initiative (MI2): Transforming Midwest Value Chains

On the last day of the conference, we will be using Strategic Doing to build the foundation for statewide strategic action plans.

Here is a handout I’ll be using for a session: Stimulus. Green Jobs. Re-employment.

Strategic Doing is catching on. In April, we’ll be in Boston for a New England regional meeting. Then we move on to the Southern region in Atlanta.

Southeast Wisconsin, Colorado and Idaho are also redesigning their workforce systems — a complex challenge — using this discipline.

One core idea of Strategic Doing (a close cousin of Appreciative Inquiry developed by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University): You need simplicity to deal with complexity.

We generate the components that snap together into a strategic action plan.

Last 5 posts by Ed Morrison

• Signing off - February 3rd, 2012
• "The current global development model is unsustainable" - February 1st, 2012
• Market opportunities for developing Chicago's green economy - January 29th, 2012
• Plain Dealer flubs its explanation for firing Tony Grossi - January 27th, 2012
• Linking and leveraging university assets to strengthen regional economies - January 27th, 2012

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