U.S. Chamber Foundation’s new curriculum is a road map to close the skills gap

A new curriculum gives businesses and economic development councils the power to organize and create a talent pipeline of skilled workers.

By Matt Parke

October 17, 2017

Businesses feeling the pinch of the skills gap can take charge of workforce development with a comprehensive strategic plan unveiled Monday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the Strada Education Network’s Talent Pipeline Management Academy.

The TPM Academy issued its Talent Pipeline Curriculum, a six-part program for building the infrastructure necessary to connect industry needs with skilled workers produced by colleges and career technical educators. The initiative seeks to close the skills gap, which is affecting small businesses and America’s leading industries alike.

These employer-led solutions are based on what the TPM calls a “supply chain management” model of workforce analysis. By utilizing available employment data, businesses can identify their workforce needs and share this information with educators, who then can create demand-driven curricula to match them.

The TPM Academy explains its rationale behind this approach: “The idea is that if employers play an expanded leadership role as “end-customers” of a talent supply chain, they will be more effective at organizing performance-driven partnerships with responsive preferred education and workforce training providers.”

The TPM Academy’s “supply chain model” applied to workforce development. Image – U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation

We are seeing the initial fruits of this increased collaboration at the regional level, such as in Los Angeles and Orange County, California, and the new TPM Academy guidelines are helping spread the message of skills-based training nationwide.

The plan is broken down into six strategies for creating a talent pipeline between educators and employers. You can download them at the following links:

The Jacksonville (Illinois) Regional Economic Development Corporation played a part in crafting the TPM Academy curriculum and according to a Jacksonville Journal-Courier report, JREDC Director Paul Ellis remarked that the program is “scalable” to fit the needs of both small towns and large cities. In this mostly manufacturing-based economic region of west-central Illinois, Ellis said that there are already businesses on board and engaged with the first strategy: organizing together to identify skill gaps.

Whether working independently or as a member of the peer-to-peer TPM Academy network, employers now have a six-month plan to implement. While the TPM Academy stresses that the plan is not a “silver bullet” that will transform skills deserts into the next Silicon Valley, it is another foundational resource for a workforce development strategy with proven success.

Join the Conversation: Take a look at the strategies and tell us on our Facebook page how your community can use this plan to boost workforce development.

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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.