Education Pathway Solutions Start With Divergent Thinking

February 7, 2017

When we posted a link to our story, Latest Jobs Report: On the Rise, But Many Workers Being Left Behind, on our Facebook page, a Facebook follower started a conversation.

He commented by asking us, “How does an organization like yours lead the way to help create public policies that facilitate education pathways?”

Though we’re not focusing on affecting policy changes at a federal level, WorkingNation does hope that our innovative storytelling starts a national conversation about scalable solutions and helps keep America working through the employment challenges that face our country. So we took that question directly to Art Bilger, WorkingNation’s Founder and CEO.

Art says one of the key ways to lead in inspiring the creation of policy that facilitates education is by regularly “stepping back and identifying issues with a willingness to look at the issues in different ways than the standard ways of looking at them.”

Art maintains that in the “standard of processing information right now, we are all bombarded with information on a moment by moment basis. This way of processing these challenges has an impact on how one can look at these issues, but how we digest them at WorkingNation is the key to seeing solutions.”

Another key component to leading the way to solutions, Art believes, is that “it’s important to regularly bring a range of different thought leaders with varying mentalities and different backgrounds around the table. To regularly hold discussions with people who think alike doesn’t always move in the direction of solutions. If you take a look at what we’ve done with the discussions we’ve hosted, you’ll see that diversity in background and perspectives contributes to changing the conversation and forming solutions.”

WATCH: WorkingNation’s Take a Seat at the Table

From a more practical standpoint, Art says that solutions are formed by the “unique approach WorkingNation is taking via storytelling. While conferences and roundtables are one thing, so often you’re talking to a reasonably small group of people who are fairly like-minded. To really change policy, you want to touch a broad spectrum. And we do that with our storytelling.”

WATCH: WorkingNation’s Slope of the Curve

“If you look at the last election, and the various policy changes that have taken place since, the changes are not so much coming from places like Rand Corporation and The American Enterprise Institute coming up with ideas,” Art maintains, “changes are coming from groups of people, like the groups that [President] Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders built through communicating with the masses. Changes and solutions come from talking to a variety of real people. When you look at cities, and their mayors and the people who get things done, it’s because they are talking to a broader mix of people, and ultimately educating others and telling their stories.”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) seems to agree. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Feb. 9, Sasse argued that a more constructive vision for tackling the current disruption of jobs and the economy would be for Washington to only do a small number of things which would create a “framework for liberty” so local governments, business, schools, and communities can implement a plan that works best for them.

Join the conversation on our Facebook page by commenting on the post below.

https://www.facebook.com/workingnation/posts/1833508386888513

For more information on the Future of Work, click here.

Op-Ed: Why can’t employers fill 9.2 million open jobs?

Founder Art Bilger on why he started WorkingNation

Cities have crucial role in creating lifelong learning systems

Why Upskilling Matters, Now More Than Ever

Get the latest from WorkingNation

Our Mission

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.