A new visual language for career pathways
On Tuesday this past week, I participated as a team member in the presentation of a report to Will County (Illinois) Workforce Investment Board. I have been working with Hamilton Galloway with EMSI and Linda Fowler of Regionerate on on a new visual “language system” to the speed communication among individuals, businesses, educational institutions, and the workforce board.
We need these new approaches in order to design and develop the rapidly shifting career pathways on which our prosperity depends. Right now, we are stuck with old mental models. Most of us think of the pathway between high school and career as a pathway that it consists of going to four years of college and moving into a career cycle.
The problem is that this mental map describes only about 25% of what really happens. Over 50% of the jobs coming online are so-called “middle skill” jobs. That is, they require postsecondary education but less than four years of college.
Our ability to describe these new career pathways is woefully inadequate. Our premise in this work is that we need to describe these new career pathways in terms of “knowledge, skills and abilities” that can be easily measured through assessment tests. Second, we believe that these new pathways need to be represented visually. The world is simply too complex to present these pathways otherwise. (I am reminded of the wall charts in the laboratory at the Cleveland Clinic, where my wife is a cancer researcher. These wall charts depict the complex signaling pathways that define communication in living systems.)
Here's a copy of the slides that we presented this week. If you're interested in exploring this option for your economy, contact Hamilton Galloway at EMSI.
