Influencing Career Aspirations - Role of Business & Mentoring

I originally wrote this article in 2013.  Since the ideas still apply, I'm sharing it again, with a few edits and additions.

--- begin 2013 article ----

In this UK report titled "Nothing in Common: The Career Aspirations of Young Britons Mapped against Projected Labor Market Demands (2010-2020)" the authors show that career aspirations for many youth do not align with available jobs and call for greater business involvement with education efforts to change this.

This lack of alignment is probably as common in the US as in the UK. So what are businesses and mentoring programs doing about it? Since I've led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program for over 35 years I've come to believe that having mentors from different business and professional backgrounds involved with young people can expand the types of career choices youth might aspire to. The image below shows young people in the Cabrini Connections program engaged in performance activities. One of those young people, Tramaine Montel Ford, is now a professional actor in New York, who says his "acting bug" started with the video program at Cabrini Connections.



At Cabrini Connections every teen was in a one-on-one match with volunteers from different business backgrounds. However, since this was a site-based program, other volunteers were also able to participate, organizing small learning groups (we called clubs) focused on technology, art, video, writing, dance, etc. These never had funding for consistent staff support so the level of activity from year to year was inconsistent, but they all provided a range of extra learning opportunities for the teens who participated.

In the mid 1990s I tried to create a new term for this type of mentoring program. I called it "Total Quality Mentoring (TQM)" borrowing from the business concept of Total Quality Management. I was describing a type of mentoring that had many different influences, and was constantly looking for ways to improve its impact by engaging the talents of volunteers and youth in all phases of program operations. This graphic was created to demonstrate this program model.

The center of the "wheel" is a youth, with the spokes representing the different types of influences that a program might expose the youth to via the volunteers who participate and the activities the program offers. This graphic also is the model for a "program" which recruits volunteers from different work backgrounds and recruits youth in elementary or middle school and works to keep them involved all through high school. As the Internet became available, this vision extends to building a life-long network connecting youth and volunteers with each other in a virtual support system.

Each spoke of the wheel has an arrow going both ways. Every time a volunteer interacts with a youth in a weekly tutor/mentor session he/she is learning something about that child and the community he/she lives in. Every week that volunteer informally shares what is learned with his friends, family and co-workers. The longer the volunteer stays involved, the greater his empathy/understanding grows and the more he is willing to do to support the youth, and often the program. This animation illustrates this service-learning loop. If volunteers are well-supported by consistent staff involvement, they will stay involved longer and many will begin to bring other volunteers, other learning opportunities, and even financial support, to the organization.

Read this 2013 Education Week article about the "eight conditions for student success" and see how "belonging" and "heroes" influence student aspirations.  I was first introduced to this in 1999 at a conference in Portland, Oregon.  It changed my termination from "motivating" students to "building student aspirations".   

Every spoke in the chart also points to a specific industry cluster that has different workforce readiness needs. In this graphic I emphasize the 12 years it takes to go from first grade through high school and the ways business could support this journey with volunteer involvement, technology, ideas and on-going funding. If companies were to look at this strategically, they could be supporting volunteers with ideas they could take to their tutor/mentor sessions. Thus, volunteers from engineering and manufacturing could be using clay and animation to teach thinking skills to elementary school kids, that might motivate aspirations for these types of careers. They also might organize field trips and job shadowing during middle school years. In addition they might offer part time jobs and internships during high school years, and even provide scholarship money and summer jobs during college years.

Here's a visual essay showing the Total Quality Mentoring idea - click here

In the above graphics you'll see inserts with maps showing high poverty areas of Chicago.  While this article shares ideas for helping individual tutor/mentor programs constantly improve, the overall goal of my articles is to help motivate donors, policy-makers and business leaders to provide the on-going resources needed to make mentor-rich non-school learning programs available to K-12 youth in every high poverty area of the Chicago region.  

If political leaders recognized the importance of this strategy they could be recruiting and recognizing companies from every industry who were adopting this strategy. The result would be that volunteers and financial support would be coming to each program in the city from many different sectors, creating a broader base of funding needed to ensure that each program had talented staff that would stay with these programs longer, and that youth were surrounded with volunteers modeling many different career aspirations, not just one or two.

If you are a volunteer, alumni, student, parent, donor, etc. you can share this idea with people in your network who are involved in different industries, or who are in media, entertainment and/or politics and who might provide encouragement for companies to adopt the Total Quality Mentoring model.

If you're being asked to contribute $50 million for a new anti-violence strategy wouldn't it make sense if this was also a workforce development strategy?

--- end 2013 article ---

I wrote this 13 years ago yet, the need is as great, or greater, today than it was then.  And with COVID, distance learning, and artificial intelligence, there are new issues to understand.

Since last December I've been posting graphics like this, showing who participated in one, more more, of the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conferences that I hosted in Chicago every six months from May 1994 to May 2015. Browse these articles to see some of these. 

As I post articles like this one, my goal is that readers will share it with their networks and that this leads to people using the Open Source Mapping Tool created by the Fall 2025 IVMOOC team at Indiana University, to show who's connecting around these ideas.  

If  you're using these ideas or creating your own versions please connect with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Instagram, Mastodon, Facebook and/or Twitter to share your work. 

Finally, I depend on contributions from a small group of supporters to keep doing this work. If you'd like to help, visit this page. 

Mentoring as a Workforce Development Strategy - Updated 2005 Article

I often look at articles I wrote in the past for inspiration for new ones. Today I'm reposting this article, which I wrote in 2005, as one of the very first articles on this blog.

I've not changed much, since what I wrote then is still needed today, in 2021.  I've just added a few graphics created since then such as this one showing that the "pipeline to careers" for kids in poverty has too many blockages. 

Here what I wrote: 

In a Sunday, April 10, 2005 Chicago Tribune article titled "Workforce needs polish, U.S. businesses declare", the secretary-treasurer of the New York State AFL-CIO was quoted as saying, "If we infuse education and job-training with an emphasis on 'employability skills,' then we develop workers who not only can get jobs, they can keep them as well."

This was  not a new issue in 2005.  My friend Edward Gordon, of Imperial Consulting Corp, has been writing about the job/skills crisis since the 1990s.  Below is a Tweet I posted last week, pointing to his latest White Paper.  

June 2021 Imperial Corps monthly report describes vision of Regional Talent Innovation Networks (RETAINs). Read at https://t.co/R5X54XbzgZ

I've known Ed Gordon for 20 years and for a while he was on Advisory Council of Tutor/Mentor Connection, which I led. pic.twitter.com/c6OlwXLIj6

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) June 21, 2021

10-2021 update - Here's a YouTube presentation by Ed Gordon introducing his Job Shock book. 

That's a message the Tutor/Mentor Connection (Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC since 2011) has been saying for more than two decades. We believe these skills need to be mentored, not just taught in short classroom sessions. Furthermore, we believe that youth living in inner-city poverty struggle to succeed in school and jobs because there are too few adults who have jobs and careers in diverse industries modeling the expectation that everyone works, and that there are many career opportunities available to those who develop their personal, academic and employment skills.

 
While the Tribune article shows the traditional approach of business and schools lobbying legislatures to develop and fund such initiatives, the T/MC believes that business has the most to gain or lose from any delay in the development of comprehensive mentoring-to-career strategies that parallel higher academic goals.

This graphic visualizes the role business needs to take, to "pull" kids through school and into jobs.

This graphic visualizes that businesses in every industry need to be leading strategies that help kids in every high poverty zip code move through school and into jobs and careers.

I encourage you to visit the Tutor/Mentor Institute strategies library and read some of the short power point essays that I started creating in the 1990s. From these you'll see that our focus is on helping comprehensive, volunteer based tutor/mentor programs be in all the places where they are needed and that we serve as an intermediary connecting people, ideas and resources from all over the world. In one power point we illustrate a PUSH and PULL strategy (see graphic above). Parents, teachers, tutors, mentors, coaches are all PUSHING kids to maximize their potential. If these resources are available consistently in the lives of kids, there's a good chance most will respond.

However, in neighborhoods of high poverty, most kids don't consistently have access to adult who are PUSHING them to do their best (view concept map above). Even when such programs exist, they compete against negative traditions and influences such as welfare, gangs, illegal income habits, etc. that reduce their influence as youth grow older. In these communities a vocational mentoring strategy needs to be in place, led by industry, unions, chambers of commerce, etc. Such a strategy uses business resources (people, ideas, technology, dollars, jobs) to create a PULL system, that reaches kids as early as first grade and stays connected with them in age appropriate mentoring, job shadowing, internships, etc. until the youth is an adult and in a job/career.

This graphic visualizes the idea of "mentor-rich" youth programs operating in every high poverty area of Chicago.  

Such programs are needed in every major city of the world, not just Chicago. If we wait for the school bureaucracy to recognize this as a responsibility, or if we wait for elected leaders to make this public policy, we'll still have this need 50 years from now and America may be a second class economy. Business must take the lead, innovating ways to reach kids in every neighborhood with programs that mentor kids through school and careers.

While the Internet can connect the T/MC with others around the world who want to learn about this vision, or who already incorporate these ideas in their own work, local intermediaries are also needed to lead and implement this vision in their own community, with their own business and universities as partners. While T/MC maps point to Chicago, Philadelphia maps should point to Philadelphia and Miami Maps should point to Miami.

That's what this graphic intends to communicate. Intermediaries like myself are trying to connect people "who can help" to information and ideas they can use, to support youth, families, schools and youth programs operating in places where help is needed.

Instead of leaders of networks and individual programs constantly competing with each other for resources, I want to create a meeting place on the Internet where we can talk of ways of working together to increase resources for each of us. In such communities we'll look at what works and try to innovate ways to make what works available in this network of tutoring/mentoring and education to careers programs.

In the graphic above I divided Chicago into sections, suggesting that teams of community/business and university partners could adopt sections of the city and take on the intermediary role that Tutor/Mentor Connection began piloting in 1993. 

 

No matter where you are in the world, you have the potential to be gathering people in your network to participate in this discussion, for the purpose of building more and better places on the East Coast, West Coast, in the UK or in Australia, where good programs meet more youth.

I created the concept map shown above a few years ago to share links to articles where people are writing about the ideas I've been sharing.  If you begin to do that, I'll add a link to your site. However, in the tutor/mentor web library I point to blogs and websites of more than 2000 others who are sharing their own information and ideas.  

 

Since 1993 I've maintained a list of Chicago non-school tutor/mentor programs. I show where they are located,  using maps like the one at the left, which you can see in this article.

As we locate programs working with youth and do more to help them get visibility, volunteers, dollars, technology, ideas, etc., we'll begin to stimulate the growth of better programs and that will soon accelerate the movement of more kids through school who are prepared for careers.

 
Are you already involved in such work? Let's find a way to connect. (when I wrote this in 2005, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn were not yet available). They are now. You can find my pages on these sites at this link. 

Dan Bassill
Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993 - present)

Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC (2011-present)

Predicted skills shortage by 2030

If you've read many of my blog articles you've seen this graphic, or a version of it.  It shows a goal of helping kids born or living in poverty areas move through school and into adult lives, with skills and networks that enable them to have meaningful, decent-paying jobs, that enable them to raise their own kids free from the grip of poverty.

In this article I want to focus on skills. And habits.

Below is a Tweet that I commented on this week.  I was listening to Patrick T. Harker of The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, on a  @washingtonpost live event. He was talking about an impending skills shortage in workforce.  

Earlier that day I had received an email from Dr. Ed Gordon, of Imperial Corp. Consulting, with his latest White Paper, talking about the expected skills shortage. So I shared Ed's article in the Tweet, I hope readers will be interested enough to take a look at the video and Ed's White Paper.

Listening to Patrick T. Harker of Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, on @washingtonpost live. He's talking about skills shortage in workforce.

Useful reading on this can be found at https://t.co/GfPFF0aRGC #skills_shortage pic.twitter.com/pRnOIO9Jw0

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) May 21, 2021

Disclosure: I've known Ed since the early 2000s. For a few years he served on the Advisory Council of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. So he's been writing about this for more than 20 years.  

10-2021 update. Here's a YouTube presentation of Ed Gordon introducing his Job Shock book. 

So, what does it take to help kids develop skills and learning habits that would enable them to succeed in school (and meet business needs for skilled workers)?   What motivates some kids to develop learning habits, while others seem indifferent?  Educators have been struggling with this for decades.

Which comes first? Habits. Or skills?  

Earlier this week my #clmooc network of educators shared a TED talk delivered by Laura Ritchie with an invitation to view her presentation and comment on it, using Vialogues.   Laura's message of skill development was one of self-agency, "Yes, I can." was the message.

As I watched her TED talk, I thought back to the Illinois Wesleyan Commencement address which I watched on May 2.  Geisha Williams, the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 200 was the speaker and her message was "Why not Me?"  

I posted this Tweet with links to both.

As I listened to @laura_ritchie say "Yes, I can." I thought of a speech I heard a few weeks ago from Geisha Williams, the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 200 company. You can listen to her talk about the role of a mentor motivating her to ask "Why not me?". https://t.co/ljBEDcncQA pic.twitter.com/XVRzOf6XGO

— Daniel Bassill (@tutormentorteam) May 20, 2021

This is the challenge.  All kids need to have the "Yes, I can" and "Why not me?" internal engines driving their learning.  In the tutor/mentor programs  I led from 1975-2011, the goal was to stimulate this thinking through the volunteer tutors and mentors we matched with kids and through the activities the program offered.  At best, this was "hit and miss" with no "silver bullet" success that reached every participant.

I created this concept map several years ago to visualize the many different systemic barriers that kids in poverty have to overcome as they move through school and into adult lives.  Volunteers and organized non-school programs are one resource that can help kids and families overcome these challenges, and my mission for the past 28 years has been to try to help such programs grow in more places.

However, the need to instill the "Yes, I can" and "Why not me?" spark in every child, reaches beyond poverty.   Instilling in kids the habits, motivations, of learning is the challenge. Some kids seem to have this naturally, or it has been modeled for them by parents, siblings, neighborhoods, since birth.  

What can we learn from others?  The web library I've been building since the early 1990s is an attempt to aggregate information that anyone can use to try to understand the challenges facing youth, parents and educators and to learn how some people are addressing those challenges.  If an idea is working in one place, why not borrow it and apply it to many places?

This concept map shows the four main sections of my library. Click on small boxes  under each node to dig deeper. 

I've been trying to make it easier for people to navigate my library for more than 20 years.  I wrote this article last November, talking about learning libraries.  I included the World Economic Forum (WEF) library as an example of what's possible. Below is a section that focuses on "Education and Skills".

When we created the first Tutor/Mentor Connection website in the late 1990s we  used the hub/spoke design on the home page to help people navigate to different sections of the library.  In the year's since I've seen other websites with this design feature, but have never been able to build that into my own library.

Thus, I keep pointing to what others are doing, and the information they host.  These are just a few of the many, many libraries of information available to help people find better ways to help children become life-long learners, constantly supported by the "Yes, I can" and "Why not me?" internal motivations.

Finding time to dig into this information, make sense of it, then apply it in one or many places is a huge challenge.  The graphic below shows a strategy I've recommended for many years.

The information available to everyone is represented by the circle at the right side of the graphic. Below the big circle are smaller circles, representing places where small groups of people can discuss the information in the library.  To the left of the big circle are two graphics, representing what each person can do to encourage others to look at the information and join the discussion.

If you share this article in your social media you're taking the "YOU" role.  If you start a discussion of this article in your faith group, workplace, fraternity, and/or family network, you're taking a deeper role.

If you discover other resources, such as more useful platforms/libraries, and you share them with me so I can add them to the Tutor/Mentor library, you're taking an even greater role.

If you do these steps regularly, perhaps we can get closer to answers that are used in thousands of places.  That's the goal.

I'm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIN. I look forward to connecting with you.  

If you appreciate what I'm sharing, please visit this page and make a contribution to help fund my efforts. Thank you. 

11-20-2021 update - The Infrastructure bill passed in 2021 does not include funds for training to produce workers to fill all the jobs created by the bill. Read commentary by JFF CEO @MariaKFlynn 

7-28-2022 update - not everyone thinks the problem is a skills shortage. Read this article by Harold Jarche

Borrowing from Tutor/Mentor Concept Map Library

I've been using concept maps since 2005 to visualize strategies and complex ideas. Below is an article from a few years ago that shows some of these maps. I hope you'll visit the #conceptMap section of this blog, and scroll through all past articles. Create your own versions and apply them to your city, or to  your own leadership.

In 1995 John McCarron of the Chicago Tribune, wrote this article, about the work I had started in 1993. In the years since then everything I've done has attempted to expand this strategy and communicate it in ways others would understand and adopt it.

In 2005 I started using concept maps to visualize commitments, strategy and the library of resources that I was making available to others.  In late 2015 I started a series of articles on the Mapping for Justice blog, to share some of these maps. Below I'm going to show some of the maps, and provide links to the articles.  Click on the headline to go to the on-line article.

Using Concept Maps to Communicate Strategy

This strategy map visualizes a commitment that any leader can make to help kids born in poverty move through school and into jobs and careers.  Read about it here.

What does "mentoring to career" pipeline look like?

How does a city get from "here" to "there"?

Tutor/Mentor Web Library Aims to Support Innovation in Youth Support World

Using Information as part of Problem Solving Process

R&D for Business Support of Tutor/Mentor Programs

 Talent and Leadership Needed to Achieve Goals

Intermediaries focused on youth in Chicago

Mapping Network Growth in Youth Development Field

These articles represent only a few of more than 1000 that I've posted since 2005.  However, they are a starting point for people who want to see broad-based strategies that reach kids in more places and help them move through school and into adult jobs and careers free of poverty.

While this blog article shows a few of my cMaps, I created this page, as an archive of almost all that I've created since 2005.

I encourage you to form a learning group in your school, club, business, family, fraternity and/or faith group, and read an article a week, or a month, then discuss them and create your interpretation, just has interns working with me have done since 2005.

Can you help?
On each cMap you'll find this graphic, with a link to this page, where you can make a contribution to help me keep doing the work I've been doing.  I hope you'll help.

Workforce Development. Violence Prevention. Role of Business.

I have used the graphic below since the 1990s to describe an ideal youth tutor/mentor program where volunteers from many business and education backgrounds connect with kids in elementary or middle school and provide a wide range of supports that not only help kids through school, but help open doors into jobs and careers.

Each spoke on this wheel leads to an industry segment.  If you read the daily newspapers or view videos like this, or read articles like this Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report, 2018, you'll see that business is very concerned about the future of its workforce, and the growth of its business.

Below is another graphic that I have used often.  Imagine that each of the arrows on the above graphic leading from the hub to a spoke looked like the arrow shown below.

Within the arrow are a variety of age-appropriate supports that business could be bringing to youth in school and non-school programs. Many already do this. However, I've seen few using maps to show an intent to provide such support in every high poverty area of cities where they do business.

In these graphics I include maps, to illustrate the need for birth to work youth development programs to be in every high poverty neighborhood. I use the graphics to emphasize the role of business in engaging its resources, jobs, employee talent and dollars, to build and sustain a system of mentor-rich youth supports in every city where it does business.

The Deloitte report starts out focusing on the role of CEOs and company leaders.  The commitment they need to make is the same one I included in this ROLE OF LEADERS pdf, which I've been sharing for over 20 years!

While Step 1 is leadership commitment. Step 2 is "Appoint a 'get it done' leader to be responsible for researching, developing and implementing company strategies. Step 3 is "do the research" to learn what you already are doing, what your employees are already engaged with, and what others are doing that you could duplicate and do better. The final step is a report to the CEO showing progress made in one year and plans to continue the work in the following year.

I've created a series of concept  maps showing why business should be taking this role. In each are links to articles that should be part of the "research" and "learning" that is done by company planners.  Take a look. Share them. Create your own.

First map focuses on reasons a company or industry should invest strategically in youth tutor/mentor programs that are designed to connect k-12 youth with workplace volunteers.

Benefits to Business - click here

Second map shows reasons to adopt the Tutor/Mentor Connection/Institute, LLC strategy.

Why invest in youth development strategy? click here

Third map points to articles from Deloitte and other companies that provide more reasons to get involved strategically in helping pull youth through school and into jobs and careers.

R&D for company involvement - do the reading - click here

This final map shows commitment CEOs from every industry need to be making to help draw kids from high poverty neighborhoods into their future workforce. Strategies developed for this hard-to-reach segment of the population will apply to youth from other economic backgrounds, too.

Put your name and company logo in the blue box - see map

These maps are part of a library of articles that you can find here, and a set of cMaps that you can find here.

Many people have told me often in past years that "this is too much information" and "no one will take the time to read this" yet that's the point of gaining CEO commitment.  This is not charity. This is survival and growth of US industry, commerce and our standard of living. It's about creating equality of opportunity for all Americans and better democracy and standard of living for all.

Ten years ago I wrote this article, talking about a $300 million dollar donation being made to the University of Chicago.  I suggested that some wealthy tech leader could make a similar gift, to establish a Tutor/Mentor Institute on a college campus, with a curriculum that had students from 9th grade through PhD level reading and learning from the articles I've posted on my web sites and blogs and the links in my web library.

If someone had responded to that offer in 2008 that university, and that benefactor, could today be producing maps and articles like mine, with icons showing where graduates from that program were now leading youth tutor/mentor programs in different Chicago neighborhoods, as volunteer board members, paid staff, donors, tutor/mentors, elected officials, media and in other roles.

Similar maps could show business, college, hospital and/or faith group locations in Chicago, with icons on each to indicate their level of strategic involvement with youth and  youth development organizations in their section of the city or suburbs.  Browse articles posted between 2008 and 2011 at the MappingforJustice blog to read more about this idea.

That offer still stands. Maybe in 2028 such a map will be available.

Cost Analysis - to employ 32k high risk male Chicago youth and adults

From WBEZ91.5Chicago

How much would it cost to create a jobs program that employs 32,656 men who live in the highest violence plagued Chicago neighborhoods. These are men who are are at the highest risk of being a victim and/or offender.  That is the question WBEZ reporter Chip Mitchell attempts to answer with this analysis.

His answer: $1.1 billion, for the program's first year.  However, as he writes:

But, just for context, it’s around the planned cost of redeveloping Union Station downtown. It’s also roughly what Illinois spends to keep its violent offenders in prison for one year.  

I was interviewed for this project, about the cost of mentoring this population, and encouraged Chip to step back and think of the systems needed to reach and employ this group. I also told him how much I appreciated being asked for my thoughts, since so few leaders in Chicago have ever reached out to me in the past 30 years as they were planning new youth development initiatives.

I think Chip has done a comprehensive analysis, with the aid of Joseph Persky, a University of Illinois at Chicago economist.  However, I think there are many other things that need to be considered in determining a price tag and launching this effort.

Take a look at the graphic below:

I think it will be easy for WBEZ to create maps that show the neighborhoods they are targeting. They already do a great job of creating similar maps and posting them on their web site.  

In the above graphic, the map at the left shows neighborhoods targeted by an anti violence initiative launched by the Mayor's office in 2013. The map at the right shows all poverty areas in Chicago. I used these maps in a 2013 article to emphasize the need for funding youth tutor/mentor programs in other neighborhoods, not just the target areas.

Above the maps is a birth-to-work graphic, emphasizing the need for funding and volunteer support of youth programs that reach kids early and stay connected, with age appropriate support all the way until they are in jobs and careers.  The yellow highlight shows the age group of men that the WBEZ write up targets.  The pink bar shows what's not included. Furthermore, since this project only focuses on men in the age 16-34 age group, there will be additional costs to employ women in these areas.

This project is important, and needs to be tried. However, unless funding supports boys and girls in all poverty areas, and all age groups, I think we'll be paying this $1 billion or more every year into infinity because we've not fixed the pipeline.  I also believe we'll also still be paying many of the costs of poverty and incarceration that the project seeks to reduce.  The additional costs of making mentor-rich programs available to youth and every poverty area has not been calculated.

Even if we only focus on the WBEZ target group and neighborhoods, there's still more to think about. Take a look at this graphic.

Planning Cycle - War on Poverty

I've used this graphic in many articles, such as this one.  Whoever takes the lead on this project needs to put together a planning map, that takes into consideration everything from Step 1 to Step 7 on this graphic. And Step 7 will be the most difficult. That's the one that focuses on building and sustaining the public will to fund this project, not for one year, but for many years.

Does the funding analysis cover the costs of this planning process?

Here's another consideration. This 4-part strategy map can be viewed at this link, and is described in this presentation.

The WBEZ article, and all the research that went into creating the analysis, would be included in Step 1, which is the information we use to understand a situation and look at possible solutions.

What I think is missing from the WBEZ analysis of cost is Step 2 and Step 3.  What type of on-going advertising and public education will be needed, over many years, to draw enough leaders from business, philanthropy, government and non profits together to build the public will to fund this project and keep it funded?  What type of on-going outreach will be needed to reach and involve those 32,000 men who are the focus of this project?

WBEZ posting this article on their web site, then sharing it on social media where I and others could find it and give it more readership through our own Tweets, likes and re-tweets is one part the strategies I focus on in Step 2 and 3.  Me writing this article and sharing it often on social media and in my email newsletter, is another. These actions will need to happen over and over, for many years, with many others writing their own blog articles, to make sense of the project and to attract more and more who take a similar role.

I don't know the answer to the questions I'm posting, but do know that this planning could benefit from some additional systems thinking and process mapping, so the full project is better understood by more people, and the full cost can be better determined.  To focus attention on the strategy map I created a new video to highlight the four sections of the map. I hope you'll take time to view it.



I've been using visualizations and concept maps for nearly 20  years to help people understand the ideas I have been sharing, show the information I've been aggregating, and demonstrate a process that I feel needs to be adopted by many leaders, if we're to build the public will needed to solve the violence and reduce the poverty and inequality that's embedded in Chicago.

I know this is another long article, but here's one more set of ideas that I hope you'll read. These articles focus on systems thinking, and mapping.  They demonstrate a process and show some tools that I hope WBEZ and others will apply to help build involvement and support for comprehensive, long-term solutions.

I hope I can be included in the planning, brainstorming and thinking that is needed.  Unfortunately, that's not often been the case in past years. However, we're focusing on the future, so I'd be happy to spend time with city leaders, and planners, to talk through the ideas I share in this and other articles on this blog and the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC web site.

Connect with me on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin.

Make sure Pipeline to Careers has roots in all poverty neighborhoods

See pipeline in this article

I've used graphics like this often to visualize a system of youth supports that starts at pre-school and continues until a young person is in a job and taking on adult responsibilities.  While we spend billions as a nation to help people who live in poverty many programs only focus on pieces of the problem, not the entire pipeline. If there's a gap in support, the pipe leaks. In many cases this can be life changing if kids get drawn into gangs, drugs, or other negative habits.

See article

As we enjoy this 4th of July weekend and think of the blessings that most Americans enjoy, I hope you'll take a few moments to think of ways you can use your time, talent, leadership, dollars, influence and votes to create a support system that makes more of these blessings available to everyone in America and to others around the world.

This "mentoring kids to careers" graphic is a different version of the pipeline, but emphasizes the same points. At each age group kids need specific types of support to help them move to the next age level. Most kids living outside of extreme poverty and segregated neighborhoods, and in smaller cities and towns, have more of these supports available to them than do kids living in high poverty areas of big cities.

See article

This is a third version of the same idea. In this case I use "oil well" as a symbol for the birth to work support kids need. I posted these on a map of Chicago, where the darker red areas are neighborhoods of  high poverty where this type of support systems needs to be created and sustained for many years.  One role researchers can take is to create asset maps of different zip codes to identify support programs that are available and find ways to help them do good work. Such maps can also show gaps in service that need to be filled, which are where the "pipeline" is broken.

The graphic below combines some of these elements. At the right is another graphic showing the birth to work support system, along with a map emphasizing a need for support to be available in all high poverty areas.  To the right I focus on building and sustaining public will to make this happen, and the need to influence people who don't live in poverty, as well as those who operate the schools and non-profits that need to become available to more kids and families in more places.

See complete collection of concept maps

If you open the links on the graphic above, which are the small boxes under each node, you'll find other articles that feature these graphics in more detail.

As you're enjoying the holiday, I hope you'll take some time to look at this, and bookmark the page, so in coming weeks you can dig deeper into these ideas and share them with friends, family, co-workers, alumni and others who also are celebrating this weekend.

While I've written articles like this for many years, many leaders are needed to re-frame this message and evangelize it in more places to more people.  Leaders who champion and spread these ideas could be students in middle school, high school, college and/or Phd students. They could be faith leaders, business leaders, athletes, rappers, even politicians.

Share links to articles you post with these ideas, in the comment box, or on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.