Recapping my time with JFF and looking ahead to how we will build a better future.
What is past is prologue.
In 2016, it was clear automation/AI and labor marketplaces would transform the employability, re-skilling and mobility of countless Americans. <2016 White House report>. And yet our nation’s greatest futurists in Silicon Valley seemed oblivious to the waning skills and economic mobility of Americans and the problem that presents for our Union. Where there was awareness, I found they lacked heart, fortitude and viable plans to address it. I wanted to see what I could do to help.
At the onset of 2017, I took a detour from building companies and spent a few years as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at JFF (Jobs for the Future) — one of the nation’s leading social impact organizations on the future of education, work and economic advancement. I had a front-row seat to see the forces shaping America — and a view into how the nation’s “leaders” see and do their work.
Why Workforce and Education?
At a primal level perhaps, it runs in my blood. It was presumed I would be a 3rd generation teacher. My grandfather was the Vocational and Career Education lead for the state of Colorado and worked to change how Community Colleges did what was then known as “Occupational Education”. As Baptists, he led me to the early discovery of (and inspiration by) Dr. King. His views on economic justice shaped my worldview.
To echo Dr. King:
We must create full employment or we must create incomes. People must be made consumers by one method or the other. And once they are placed in this position, we need to be concerned that the potential of the individual is not wasted. New forms of work that enhance the social good will also have to be devised for those for whom traditional jobs are not available
I have always felt the meaning of life is to discover and live our personal potential. It’s an extraordinary opportunity we each have here in “life school” to discover who we truly are and develop and express our highest selves. And since we spend a majority of our life in work — shouldn’t the interplay of our talents, skills and development take place within the context of work (and learning)?
What we accomplished.
An Industry Change Agenda
The modernization needs of America’s workforce and education system are endless. In 2017 it was clear that the biggest and most important shifts ought to be:
1. Getting people to think and act in terms of skills and not degrees
2. Getting people to connect learning to work
3. Transforming mindsets about how and where learning takes place (on the job and in practice; not in a classroom)
My questions upon entering the industry as an outsider were: what would it take for key system leaders to be woken up, clarified, inspired and effective? Could incentives be reworked? Could money be spent more efficiently? Could a bridge be built between innovation models and incumbent systems and structures?
As we traveled between coasts, I worked and lived out of Hiltons and various offices, attended or led small meetings and gatherings, and helped produce and attended large conferences of 1,000+ people. We promoted a change agenda — — and helped others drive/implement when and where we could. Among the wins:
- Education institutions (two and four year) partnering more closely with employers
- Employers taking a more active role in education and developing people and opportunities (Corporate Action Platform)
- Helping to foster the rise and value of alternative vocational training programs (ex: SVAcademy)
- Scaling outcomes-based financing including income-share agreements as a workforce solution to increase economic mobility
- Job Centers embracing technology, new funding models and new types of training partners (AWAKE)
- Deeper regional coordination between economic development and economic mobility funders and partners
- Ensuring that skills > degrees for those training and hiring
- Driving learner mindsets (emphasizing leading, experimenting and learning mindsets over content expertise)
- Embedding Entrepreneurship and Intrapraneurship within key institutions
- Modernizing the acquisition and use of data: Outcomes for Opportunity
- Distributing new models in partnership / through existing infrastructure (ex: Google IT + Community Colleges)
Key Bodies of Work
Our day-to-day work focused on modernizing America’s workforce and economic mobility systems. We partnered closely with key foundations (Walmart, Google, Salesforce, Autodesk, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), national policy shapers (Aspen, New America, Whiteboard, etc.), corporations and dozens of startup ecosystem founders.
We oversaw $150m in innovation and systemic change management spending and influenced well over $1B in philanthropic, CSR and government spend.
Key initiatives during this time included the conception, funding and/or oversight of:
- Innovation. Started and built JFFLabs — an innovation-focused team that curates leading startups, invests in some and works to accelerate the traction of those that can impact economic mobility
- Impact Investments. Moved JFF towards impact investing into leading startups with ETF@JFFLabs
- Future of Education Financing. Catalyzing new forms of education finance and a bi-partisan understanding of them (especially income-share agreements) with the Financing the Future initative
- Technology Enabled Worker Training. Driving the awareness and use of assessments and immersive learning (VR/AR)
- Elevating the Role of Employers. Forming and launching the Corporate Action Platform with JPMC Foundation to guide, inspire and advise Fortune 500 CSR and HR leaders on actionable, measurable actions
- Modernizing American Job Centers. Driving a change management imperative for the American Job Center system through AWAKE (Advanced Workforce Analytics and Knowledge Exchange)
- Scaling Online Credentials and new forms of education within traditional system partnerships. A leading example being the Grow with Google IT Certification delivered by Coursera scaled to 100 community colleges
- Applied Learning. Modernizing concepts around Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeships
- Moonshot Thinking. Partnering with Schmidt Futures to launch the $1B Wage Gain Challenge.
Organizational Change.
Beyond the external innovation initiatives, I am perhaps most proud of the work we did to “future-ready” JFF itself. We moved the organization’s board, leadership, culture, values and strategy forward through a dual transformation approach.
We did fulfilling and valuable creative work (see video example) to set the essence and tone of JFF’s future with friends and partners with the help of IdeasUnited and Type/Code.
We re-established values. Improved alignment of the work. Built out roles and the Executive team. We put in motion ambitious growth plans. And if I had to guess, JFF will be 3x in size in 3 years.
Spotlighting Progress
Perhaps in the years ahead I’ll share lessons learned and interview leaders on the front lines implementing and driving these imperatives forward. Many relevant people in the industry work at JFF, partner with JFF or are actively “borrowing” from and scaling what JFF initiated. I’m proud of the work we did do, the team (especially), and the changes we were able to drive together. I’m grateful to Maria Flynn (CEO of JFF) for her commitment to our change agenda; her leadership inside and outside of JFF; and for entrusting the build out of several new parts of JFF to me and the team. It’s been rewarding to see everyone’s work rise during this time and exciting because I can already see what it will become.
The Problem with Systems as a Focus
All of that said, the workforce and education industry maintains an institutional and system-centric understanding of the world. It’s getting increasingly bureaucratic, politicized and is radically inefficient. It’s littered with top-down thinking/acting and unconscious egos. Most seem content to say the system is failing people. Not nearly enough leaders are concerned about the reality that it’s, in fact, harming people.
Billions, if not ultimately trillions of dollars in taxpayer and philanthropic dollars are wasted on top-down, inefficient “system change”. We continue to allocate capital, attention and training for the outer dimensions of people (skills, knowledge, etc) while society — and our collective culture — suffer the downstream costs.
Education and workforce training needs to be rethought entirely. It must shift towards people-centric, iterative models focused on one’s ability to develop themselves and their careers in an agile way.
Looking Ahead.
At the dawn of the AI era, it is time to build a new system for how people discover and develop their talent. As knowledge and problem solving become increasingly fungible — education, learning and development needs to now focus on what is true inside of a person, and how they can operate with agency. All trainings ought to pivot around that focal point. We need to focus on cultivating human vitality along with Vocational Education in the truest sense of the word (gifts, purpose and calling).
My personal bet is that the self-development movement that’s now well underway with consumers will work its way into our institutions through partnerships. Leading employers and educators that sponsor and integrate this type of work into their culture and practices more broadly will be winners. Companies and learning institutions that focus only on skills and jobs will fall woefully short of their true purpose, potential and competitiveness.
To those of you I have worked with across the industry, I look forward to the next chapter of building, learning and moving things forward together.
As Marc Andreessen penned, “It’s Time to Build”. What better thing could we build together than a world full of people who know how to thrive?
