WIELD WE THE PEN

Category Marketing: How Small Businesses Win The Art If David would have walked out to meet Goliath with sword and shield, he would surely have been destroyed. If the American Revolutionaries would have marched out to meet the Red Coats in an open field, they would surely have been decimated. The secret to competing with…

Are the people of your community getting richer or poorer? Well, by isolated metrics, like wages and 401ks, one could argue richer. But by lived experience, in relation to the important expenses of our lives and our ability to build wealth over time, the clear answer is poorer. But why? The answer is woven into our economic system.

There is no better workforce investment than my wife. My wife is a counselor at a small, rural, Title I elementary school in South Carolina. How much money is being spent to address the soft-skills crisis in the US right now? How many billions of dollars? How many employers report that workers struggle with communication, teamwork, adaptability, conflict management, and self-regulation? Working with adults is triage. We must invest in the future of our workforce.

Economic Developers have traditionally focused on business recruitment and real estate development. Now we find ourselves in workforce development, skills training, soft-skills, even transportation and childcare. We need a new perspective on what it means to serve a community in Economic Development.