Both our keynote speaker, Thomas Frey, and the representative of our lead sponsor, Brian Stuelpner of Schneider, opened their remarks on March 1 with references to the 1960s animated cartoon series, The Jetsons. We were reminded that the Jetsons lived in something looking suspiciously like the Seattle Space Needle (which didn’t yet exist), used robot vacuums and smart phones, and even participated in “Zoom calls” on flat-screen TVs. What to make of it all? With that opening, our 300+ guests at the KI Convention Center were mesmerized with signals of what the future holds and the evidence of developing trends. The eye-popping, inspiring presentations were punctuated with regular audience discussion and participation and great networking.
Randy Van Straten, Envision Board member and VP, Business & Community Health, Bellin Health
“What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems,” said John W. Gardner, former United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. This quotation aligns perfectly with my experiences in health care over these past three-plus years after completing the strategic foresight training program. This program helped me identify signals and trends by scanning the horizon, which then helped picture the most probable future – a chance to turn those insoluble problems into rich opportunities for Bellin Health.
Sometimes, timing is everything: Having completed the strategic foresight training and then heading straight into COVID-19 really helped when approaching some of the biggest health care challenges we have faced in our lifetime. As I set up my Google alerts during this time, the information flew in; this helped guide new contacts and innovative approaches to COVID-19 safety, testing, and vaccinations. One primary example was the opportunity to participate in the Global Mass Vaccination Site Collaborative through Harvard. This led to guidance on important community breakthroughs in the fight against COVID-19. We learned to partner with employers, the Green Bay Packers, and the Brown County Health Department to deliver what our community needed: onsite COVID-19 testing at large employers; a drive-through testing and vaccination site in a former Sears Automotive Center; converting the Lambeau Field atrium into the largest vaccination site in the region; and repurposing a city bus into a mobile vaccination clinic to reach individuals in all areas of our community.
Another success we achieved through “scanning the horizon” was creating Bellin’s Early Intervention Ergonomic and Rehab service. This program totally flips the old way of providing rehabilitative physical and occupational services only after a referral or surgery is completed by a medical provider. This Early Intervention and Rehab service is now offered directly to employees onsite or nearby and delivers hands-on care to individuals after only one or two days of onset of musculoskeletal issues without a referral, providing a 94-percent resolution rate with only six percent needing to go on to see a medical doctor. This solution has reduced high-cost imaging volumes, surgery volumes, and medical costs over the last two years.
Lastly, and the new opportunity I am most excited about, was the design of a mobile medical screening truck and trailer that will provide onsite audiometric services, pulmonary and respiratory exams, and medical services to employers and community groups. This new rig will arrive at Bellin Health in late spring. Thanks to our scanning, we’ve been able to create and design a new service that will help elevate the health of the employees at our employer partners, big and small, city or rural, in a way that helps our employers provide safe and convenient services to their employees at work while creating production efficiency for the employers in a tight labor market.
Now that Bellin Health has trained a few leaders and committed to scanning the horizon faithfully, I offer this advice to the community: Do not hesitate to get signed up for the next Strategic Foresight Training Session. After completing the training, you will have an immediate impact on your organization and find those key drivers of change that will determine which alternative futures your organization needs to take. With this knowledge, you will more effectively plan your actions to influence your organization’s future rather than only react to problems. And as John W. Gardner says, take some insoluble problems and move them into breathtaking opportunities. See you in the future!
It started in the paper industry, a mainstay of the northeast Wisconsin economy. In 1996, the Scott paper company in Oconto Falls closed. That was followed by closings and mass layoffs at many area paper companies. The number of affected workers was soon in the thousands. Then the layoffs hit the manufacturing sector as well.
I remember well, because it was my job to provide employment and retraining services to those workers. I spent many hours in sessions full of middle-aged, gravitationally- challenged men whose world had turned upside down. My poster child was Mirro Aluminum in Manitowoc, which closed in 2003, leaving 1300 men and women idle, a third of them at reading and math levels below fourth grade. It was an ugly time.
Two trends were developing, and we didn’t see them coming. First, sectors of our economy were entering a global marketplace. Countries that were finally recovering from the devastation of World War II and the dissolution of the Soviet Union brought tens of millions of workers into that global supply chain. Secondly, and equally important, was technological advancement: Computer applications and the Internet brought new tools into the workplace. It was going to take more than a high school education to operate a $200 million paper machine.
We did not see those trends coming. It was also the beginning of the Baby Boom retirement movement, and our workplaces were becoming more generationally diverse. We discovered that Gen X and the young Millennials had work and life values different from Boomers.
Nancy Armbrust, VP of Community Relations at Schreiber, had given my board chair, Paul Linzmeyer, a book entitled The Rise of the Creative Class by Dr. Richard Florida, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Paul read it, brought it to me a week later, and said, “Get him here.”
Dr. Florida had begun to articulate the seismic economic changes facing the American workforce; he was becoming a nationally recognized guru on adapting to those new realities. In 2002, Senator Herb Kohl had secured a $1.2 million federal Earmark Grant for my organization, Bay Area Workforce Development Board. That gave us some resources to start looking at the future. I also partnered with Wendy Seronko at Employers Workforce Development Network, a business-led group we had brought together.
On September 18, 2003, Dr. Florida and his team led a day-long “Creative Future Economy” workshop with three hundred business and community leaders at the brand new Lambeau Field Atrium. He addressed the trends we were experiencing around the overall theme of becoming a “Community of Choice” for talent. He gave us a new vocabulary and insight into our new economic realities.
Following up on the workshop, my colleague in the Fox Valley, Cheryl Welch, and I sponsored a major study, the NEW Economic Opportunity Study, conducted by Northstar Economics; it became our game plan for moving forward. An implementation committee led by Kathi Seifert (Kimberly Clark) and Bob DeKoch (Boldt) focused on bringing together the resources to implement the study recommendations.
That effort resulted in the creation of NEW North in 2005, which became the model for similar regional efforts in the state and remains the most successful of those efforts. It also led to a partnership between Bay Area WDB and NWTC to create NEW Manufacturing Alliance, an industry partnership that has won national and international awards for successfully promoting manufacturing careers.
In 2013, Bay Area WDB helped NWTC purchase the first of a fleet of mobile training labs to make technical skill training available throughout northeast Wisconsin. We soon integrated the first mobile lab, containing a CNC mill and CNC lathe, with our prison re-entry programs, giving 120 men and women at the Oshkosh and Taycheedah facilities a hands-on demonstration of manufacturing careers. Today, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has its own fleet of five mobile manufacturing labs.
We were late getting into the game, failing to recognize the economic trends that should have been apparent at the end of the twentieth century. Once those trends became painfully obvious, we brought in Richard Florida and got buy-in from community and business leadership. We caught up quickly and are enjoying the fruits of our efforts in 2023.
But what trends are developing now? What should we be planning for today?
The world’s first robot lawyer will soon defend a human in a speeding ticket case in an actual United States court. The CEO of DoNotPay introduced his AI lawyer to the world in a January Twitter clip. In this video the company’s bot successfully negotiated a Comcast Internet bill with the Comcast Chat bot. Human observers noted that both bots were “a bit too polite.” Next up for the AI lawyer will be credit card chargebacks, airline complaints and Amazon returns, the CEO said, noting the service will be publicly available soon. More complicated cases like parking and speeding tickets, appealing bank fees and suing robocallers will be available next.
Click here to read, “World’s First Robot Lawyer to Defend Human in Speeding Ticket Case in US”
The Automobile Gallery was again the site for a new Envision Strategic Foresight cohort to begin studies under the guidance of Garry Golden. On February 3 the following businesses and nonprofit organizations sent representatives to the training, bringing the total number of local leaders now trained to 125:
• O’Connor Connective • NE Wisconsin Technical College • Foundations Health & Wholeness • St. Norbert College • Prevea Health • HSHS • Bellin Health • Bay Towel, Inc. • Greater Green Bay Chamber • Green Bay Police Department
Click here to read the entire article with accompanying photos.
Firms prepared for the future are 33% more profitable and grow twice as fast as others, research says. Companies that scan a variety of environments, such as technology, politics, environment, competition, and customer landscape, develop a strong understanding of market shifts and of new features that meet customer needs, and so their revenues increase.
We have learned that our graduates, after completing their Strategic Foresight (SF) training, recognize value in comparing experiences with other SF grads and continuing to work together to implement the tools they’ve learned. So we’re launching our first two networking cohorts in the very near future, bringing together like-minded people who share similar situations and see foresight from similar perspectives. In each case we will seek “a good match” of people as we build the network. These are the features to which we’re committed:
Purposeful meetings aimed at shared experiences, getting questions answered, learning improved techniques, recognizing mutual challenges, and developing meaningful friendships
Well-timed gatherings, probably every 8-10 weeks
Scheduled at an optimal time of day for good attendance and focus
Commitment by network members to attend regularly and engage
Confidentiality
An agenda that is carefully planned and shared
Facilitation by an experienced professional
These networking cohorts will launch soon. There will be no participation fee as we fine-tune this structure over 2023. If you’re interested in joining such a network within these guidelines, contact Steve McCarthy, Executive Director.
Explore Envision’s newsletter, January 2023 Horizons. We spotlight community leader Ann Franz and highlight Chris Czarnik’s insights on work forces. Read about our March 1, 2023 World Futures Day celebration.
It was 2006 when Paul Rauscher met Ann Franz. Ann had recently started as Business Liaison for Bay Area Workforce Development Board (WDB), and Paul owned EMT International, a manufacturer of large, high-speed printers in Green Bay. Watching trends in manufacturing, Paul had observed:
An aging manufacturing workforce in one of the most heavily concentrated manufacturing regions in the country
A public image of manufacturing as dirty, dumb, dead-end, and headed for China
A K-12 and university education system that actively promoted four-year university degrees and discouraged training in the skilled trades
An economic opportunity to build on regional strength and experience
“There is a zero percent likelihood you will have enough people to fill all your jobs for the next ten years!” That’s the headline takeaway from Chris Czarnik, an Appleton-based national speaker on “Talent Recruitment and Management” and author of Winning The War for Talent.
Employers have realized for two years that there aren’t enough people to staff their enterprises. But we’re wondering when it will end. Czarnik says employers must realize that this fundamental shift we’re seeing today will be permanent for the foreseeable future. He points to data that says it will be many years from now, requiring a 180-degree shift in how you approach recruiting.
