Birth2Work Radio Show

Never in the history of our world has the need for large numbers of bright, articulate, resourceful people with great critical thinking capabilities been more important. The looming question is, whose job is it to prepare them?

Join us with guest Janet Doman, Director of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, discussing how today’s parents can successfully begin the preparation of children for physical, intellectual and social challenges they will face in the future, right from birth.

Our guest is William (Bill) Scott. A man lauded in the world of aeronautics and aviation as one of its most prolific and effective writers for more than 20 years, Bill has traveled the world interviewing and writing about some of the most important people in the field of aviation. He has willingly risked his reputation and credibility over and over again to tell stories others often would not consider covering. And with some of those stories, he incited global fervor about the future of our science and engineering workforce. Bill broke the very first media stories on the workforce crisis that looms today over an entire world of professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Today's guest, author and trainer Bob Dickman, defines storytelling as a story - wrapped in an emotion - that can compel us to take action and thereby transform the world around us. That is why great stakeholder leaders are inevitably great storytellers too.

Bob Dickman is an executive coach who teaches narrative strategies as they relate to corporate communication, product design, and branding through FirstVoice, a consulting firm specializing in media awareness training for business. His book, "The Elements of Persuasion" (HarperCollins), co-authored with Richard Maxwell, was nominated as one of the top business books of 2007 and has been translated into 15 languages. In our interview we get a close up glimpse at how he actually works with clients to bring out their ability to reach a crowd with story. You'll learn how his work with clients all across the country aligns with Birth2Work and why understanding the elements of a good story can change the way you communicate, forever. Many of the core principles he outlines in his book, are ones that we embraced in the writing of our own book, The System: Igniting the Soul of Commerce.

Whether talking a cop out of a parking ticket, getting that last stand-by seat to get to a wedding, or simply telling our own personal stories to friends, telling a compelling story creates empathy, part of the larger ability humans have to put themselves in another person's shoes. We are able to attribute mental states to another entity, which is crucial to social interaction and communal living-and to understanding stories others tell us.

In our book, we drew heavily on traditional story telling to fill in the emotional details of the years of facts we had gathered about what is going on in America's communities and why too many kids aren't fully developing the skills they need to thrive in the new economy. We wanted to promise our readers that their time spent on this book was of great value because these facts are about real people and real circumstances. And they would be able to remember what they read. In the novel, by naturally utilizing the human instinct for empathy, we wrote about characters who are all the people we know from communities we've lived in or visited. Readers could see themselves in the fictional community, and more easily see how they too could learn and become active and engaged with others.

Storytelling has persisted in human culture since the earliest records known to man. Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian. Storytelling promotes cohesion among groups and serves as a valuable method for passing on knowledge to future generations -- informative, cautionary, or entertaining. We hope you will embrace this new knowledge for business, in life, and for transformation. Storytelling is an art and a science. To lead others well, a great stakeholder leader must have the facts, but he must also be able to share them with people he meets as if they applied to them personally, as any good storyteller knows.

- Elane V. Scott

www.Birth2Work.org

I am pleased to welcome Judy Towne Jennings, PT, MA, discussing the critical importance of “tummy time” for infants. Our health series brings you critical conversations with doctors, brain development specialists, nutrition experts and physical therapists, such as Judy, to help you understand more about the disconnected worlds of health care and the public expectations of it.

Building a capable workforce and thoughtful, engaged citizenry for the future, is overwhelmingly influenced by each person’s primary caregiver in their first six years of life. Yet today, we (the broad, societal “we”) keep looking around at each other, panic stricken, saying “What do we do? Why are so many kids being diagnosed with autism, speech delays, and behavioral disorders?” And while theories abound that attempt to explain these substantive changes in our children – such as changes in the medical diagnostic standards, mercury in early childhood vaccinations, disposable diapers, even forward-facing strollers – few people have connected more than a few dots in the broad picture of childhood...except for us at Birth2Work.

I pulled this week’s guest right out of the national news. It was the August 9, 2008 issue of Newsweek where I first read Judy’s name in association with Christina Gilliam’s interview “Giving Your Baby Enough Tummy Time.” As the official spokesperson for the American Association of Physical Therapists, Judy gave valuable, easy to understand answers born of her own experience as a physical therapist, on the crucial importance of “tummy time for infants.” Once a tried true way to get babies moving, creeping and crawling around on the floor has become as much of a novelty today as strollers were 50 years ago. Giving babies regular time on their stomachs while they are awake and supervised is critical for developing their motor skills, like gripping and grasping, holding up the neck and head, developing shoulders and core strength, not to mention eye movement that must precede the ability to read, and tongue movement important to speech development. I have been talking about this for years and I'm excited to talk more about it with you.

In her role as a practicing physical therapist for 40 years, Judy has persisted in providing the best care she could to her patients, even as she noted that critical physical milestones of many of her youngest patients were not being reached. For example, 6 month old babies come into her office and are often now no more developed than a 2 month old. Judy sees this because she has been practicing for a long time. But what about physical therapists who have only been practicing for a short time? Do they see the difference? Meeting these developmental milestones for her youngest patients has become increasingly problematic. For Judy, as a stakeholder in the health profession, it was too important to look the other way. She had to act and began asking others in her profession if she was the only physical therapist experiencing this phenomenon. Indeed, she was not. Together, she and her peers acted.

If you want to know why your child’s physical development is so crucial to long term brain development and capacity building for the future, listen to this program. You don’t want to miss this interview.

- Elane V. Scott

www.Birth2Work.org

We’re all familiar with buzz words such as “integrate” and “collaborate.” But how do you actually get people to take the next step and move from talk to action? On this Birth2Work Radio program, co-host Rick Stephens and I have invited Kevin Buck, principal and co-founder of Emergent Success, Inc., to discuss precisely that. What is the leader’s role as a facilitator of collaboration and action with measurable results?

The facilitation role Birth2Work prefers requires the leader to invite every sector to answer fundamental questions about the whole group, "Who are we? What are our common goals? What do we want to accomplish together? And how might we work better together?” Integration happens when there is a shift in language among participants who want a new outcome, where they take ownership over their group process and there’s no need to “sell” anyone on an idea.

Birth2Work and Emergent Success share a passion for a system’s approach to working on tough, complex issues because there’s no such thing as a single solution to any of today’s prominent problems. In a tightly interconnected world like we live in, we feel the effects of global activities in our own backyards. The economic sectors that drive commerce - business, government, education, healthcare, media, and community groups – are interdependent and rely on the stability of each other for their progress and survival. Businesses need the education system to supply them with capable workers. Education depends on the government and business for funding. The students in the education system depend on their parents and communities for support in order to grow and learn. Parents and their communities depend on businesses, community/non-profits, and the local healthcare system to be stable, provide jobs and services that make their lives work. The media which overlay them all have become the drivers which shine a light on the distinctions between one place or another in society shaping who and what we think is important.

But who’s paying attention? Hopefully, it’s the community stakeholder leaders.

What Birth2Work is about is showcasing the people who are in your own communities; those who are taking action right now in their work to lead and facilitate systemic change and progress on critical social issues. Like Kevin, they are motivated by real collaboration in business offices, hospitals, or community town hall meetings, where local stakeholders have come together to solve problems that require the input and work of those who are affected by the plan, right where they are.

- Elane V. Scott

www.Birth2Work.org

Our guest, Lucia Cape, was the first person to be named Vice President for Workforce at the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County, Alabama, in October 2006. She was charged with establishing the Chamber's Workforce Division in response to the workforce challenges brought on by the region's amazing economic growth, including the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Act that has brought thousands of jobs to Redstone Arsenal, a government facility, in Huntsville. Prior to joining the Chamber staff, Lucia was a contractor to the Marshall Space Flight Center's Academic Affairs Office from 2002-2006 where she worked in informal education, including business/industry partnerships. This is when we first met Lucia and began the working relationship which we continue today.

We believe you will find her interview to be of particular interest in the current economic times because she is working in a part of the country where the employment base has grown by 13.5% since 2000, accounting for 33% of all net employment in the state of Alabama. Also, Huntsville's workforce growth accounted for an astonishing 66% of the entire state's total increase in available workforce, as reported in the 2008 Huntsville Madison County Economic Growth Report. From the outsider economic developer's view, it's a dream situation. Few other places can match Huntsville's economic performance.

In this interview we talk about Lucia's work and continued growth as a professional - from contractor to the role of Vice President at the Chamber. We get to touch on some of the challenges she has faced, and then discuss the personal side of her work, such as how, as a working mom, she continues to apply at home what she learned from reading our book, "The System: Igniting the Soul of Commerce", and in other parts of her community life. Join us for an insider's view of a workforce development professional.

- Elane V. Scott

www.Birth2Work.org

This week the leaders of Vermilion County, Illinois will post some economic gain in a marketplace where thousands upon thousands are showing decline. Why? Listen to the program today as we talk with two more people from Vermilion County about their views of the shift in thinking and work that began there over ten years ago. At that time the region was struggling with 20% unemployment, long-time big industries had closed down, and the people of this county were going through their own recession while the rest of the country was enjoying unparalleled prosperity. Today, the tables have turned somewhat.

Meet Lou Mervis, former Chairman of the Illinois State School Board, and Jeff Mays, a former Illinois State Legislator, who brought their best talents and skills home to help. We heard last week from Vicki Haugen, Vermilion Advantage CEO and President, about the visioning and facilitation she has been part of since Vermilion County leaders took on the challenge of rebuilding a future for their county after some devastating economic losses. This week we thought it would be helpful to bring in another perspective on the same process. Jeff and Lou, with me and co-host Rick Stephens, follow the thread of business involvement and engagement of leaders in local education in the last 25 years.

What they saw happening was the difficulty independent businesses had in making a go of it once the larger industries they worked with left the area. Local businesses began merging with companies from outside their area to make up for it. The result was that the new CEOs and other major figures of the business community were no longer living in the towns in which their businesses were based, and so those leaders didn’t have the same stake in the health of the town’s educational system or workforce. Further, local Vermilion County issues didn’t impact many of them at a personal level because their kids didn’t go to school there or look for jobs within in the area. What used to be a given, that the president of the local mill would also serve on the local school board, was no longer true. Simultaneously, workers in the industry-based towns had in mind that with a “strong back and a will to work,” a person could make a good living, and that education was of secondary importance. Eventually, of course, those jobs were either automated for machine processing or they were outsourced to another country, but employees with that earlier mindset stayed on, making transitions to new jobs tougher. Local businesses and business leaders also surrendered involvement when state mandates, incongruous with local needs, started being made. Business leaders threw up their hands, and asked “Why bother?”

Of course hindsight is always 20/20. We can see now what factors were at play that led up to the more recent state of distress in these communities (like hundreds of others are in this country). Today, after more than ten years of focused effort, including multitudes of initiatives and countless programs, Vermilion County leaders from all economic sectors are aligning around common language and a shared set of values established by the community’s stakeholder leaders. (Beyond an agreement to speak English, alignment of language means answering the question “What do WE mean when we say X?” See our website for a posted list of leadership definitions that we hope will help our listeners and visitors align with us in language.) Vermilion leaders continue to refine and work their plan so that generations to come can keep Vermilion County and its people working and looking toward the future. That is why today Vermilion County is posting an economic gain when others are not.

- Elane V. Scott

www.Birth2Work.org

A good story is something treasured, certainly in novels, movies, or film. By “good” I don’t mean upbeat or positive, but coherent, thorough, and with an original voice. Where fiction is involved, we hold story creators to a high standard of originality. Why when dealing with reality then, do we continually tell the same old stories of how things used to be over and over again?

For example, you know that one location in your city that never seems to be able to sustain a shop longer than six months? (I’m sure every town has a location like this.) In good times and in bad, no matter what kind of music store, restaurant, or tire shop goes in there, it seems to be cursed? So that one plot of land gets a bad reputation, people tell each other the same stories of how one thing after another opens and closes there and, soon enough, the place sits empty and falls into disrepair because no one is willing to try to make things work there anymore. Consider that one location as a microcosm of the thousands of small towns, particularly throughout the Midwest in our country, that are constantly telling each other stories about how all the young people are moving away; the factories are closing; the local government is corrupt; the media doesn’t care; and on and on and on until sure enough, the towns are virtually empty and then, slowly fall into disrepair. It’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, isn’t it? You have certain beliefs based on the stories you’re told, either by parents or leaders or media, and you take action to better your situation based on those beliefs. The stories we tell affect our outcomes.

Listeners to this program will recall a past interview we did with Vicki Haugen, President and CEO of Vermilion Advantage in Vermilion County, Illinois. Since 1982, Vicki has been at the helm of Vermilion County’s venture of mass transformation. The area, once prosperous from agriculture and heavy industry in the region, was forced into massive layoffs and closures in the 1980s thanks to globalization, threatening to leave Vermilion County as a dying part of the “Rust Belt.” Refusing to passively let their county die out, however, the county’s Chamber of Commerce merged with the private Economic Development Corp., of which Vicki was President and CEO, thus creating Vermilion Advantage, and starting the process of transforming into a sustainable community in which its citizens are engaged and thrive.

Part of that undertaking meant encouraging stakeholders (and by virtue of residency, everyone in the County is/was a stakeholder in its success) to change the stories on auto-repeat about “how things are” there. The root of changing the stories wasn’t about asking the local paper to simply start reporting “good news” in order to make people feel better though. Changing the stories meant bringing together stakeholders from every sector, and to recognize and bring leaders from all the sectors together took Birth2Work’s help, and having them agree on common language and a common vision that everyone could begin working toward. Suddenly, the stories that started to be told among citizens were in relationship to positive new goals, instead of past failures. And today the stories people tell about Vermilion County are igniting new action and enthusiasm towards the achievement of shared goals in the community. Vermilion County’s recent success story though, is similar to a lot of “overnight success” stories – it took 20 years to get there! Stakeholder leaders have come 180 degrees from the point of looking into the abyss of a local economic depression in the 1980’s, to a picture of economic and cultural sustainability today thanks to the entire community’s commitment to working together over the long haul. Sound like a timely and encouraging story that has deep relevance to our country’s circumstance today? We at Birth2Work and those in Vermilion County feel like it is. We care deepl

On this Birth2Work Radio show, we are in conversation with Vicki Haugen. Since 1982, Vicki has been at the helm of Vermilion County, Illinois' venture of mass transformation. Once prosperous from agriculture and heavy industry in the area, globalization took that away and forced massive layoffs and closures in the 1980s, threatening to leave Vermilion County as a dying part of the "Rust Belt." Refusing to passively let their county die out, however, the county's Chamber of Commerce merged with the private Economic Development Corporation, of which Vicki was President and CEO, and began the process of transforming the county into a sustainable, high tech. community in which its citizens are engaged and thrive. With Birth2Work's book, The System: Seeking the Soul of Commerce, as a road map, the stakeholder leaders have embraced the undertaking of a grass roots effort in redefinition - telling a new story of their community.

As citizens and as stakeholders - for our own economic well being - we must make critical changes now. But where do we begin? We must begin with the understanding that, like education, there are no single solutions. What Birth2Work leaders talk about is process. Given the state of health care in this nation, solutions will not be found simply through the desire to solve the complex health care problems we face. Rather, we must align stakeholder values around health. We must have some broader, clearer vision about what it means to be healthy and what the measures are that tell us we have been successful in getting healthy.

On Birth2Work Radio, we highlight health stakeholder leaders with multi-faceted approaches to human care giving. We take special care to present them within the context of what Birth2Work does—examining the many aspects of systemic issues that affect communities (in this case health and health care) from the beginning of life through adulthood, and the necessity for engagement of every sector (education, government, business, non-profits, media and health) to even have a shot at achieving a sustainable solution. The health series includes a Dr Alberto Gedissman, pediatrician serving as a community saver, as well as a life saver, dealing with the pediatric obesity epidemic (iTunes release June 5, 2013); and Harvard educated neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (iTunes release March 6, 2013), who talked about being a patient following a massive stroke, and held us spell bound as she described what it was like to be aware of a tumor pushing against one side of her brain. We learned about the surgery that kept her alive, but it was her mother’s instinctive care for eight years after that surgery that helped her recover her life. In the months to come, we'll release additions to our healthcare series: a neonatologist and hospital CEO, who has done groundbreaking work on the urgency of mother and baby bonding at birth (Dr. Bob Roth); and a physical therapist and spokesperson for the American Association of Physical Therapists who is shedding light on a growing crisis related to improper physical and cognitive development in young children due to a lack of “Tummy Time” (Judy Towne Jennings).

Why are these stories so important? They help give us a glimpse at the magic that results when the powers of the human mind and spirit meet the wonder of technology. No matter how extraordinary the things are that we can do with technology, it is still the gifts of time and the as yet immeasurable value of caring between humans that leaves us breathless with possibility.

Today’s guest, clinical nutritionist Jim Ehmke, furthers our health series with his discussion about health and the responsibilities we have as our own primary stakeholders. He gives us that same glimpse at the importance of the human heart and soul in improving health practices and policies. When he and his wife began their Milwaukee-based practice, Complete Health Services, in 1976, there was a roaring national debate about the value of “alternatives” to traditional Western health care practices. Some thought those who were advocating more natural products or more personal responsibility were all nuts. Perhaps some were. But over time, the underlying messages of personal accountability and responsibility have grown, not diminished. Today prevention is not a dirty word. What we know, in the face of our massive economic meltdown and skyrocketing future health care costs as a nation, is that the day of the small town general practitioner who advised and guided us from birth to death, is long gone. We must be our own, best health stakeholders, and drive policy toward a standard of health that is more than simply an absence of disease. We salute all of us who began exploring alternative health practices at the dawn of the “health movement.” And that’s where we pick up today’s program.