VIDEO: Forum Event Kicks Off “Systems Change” Focused Effort Toward Inclusive Workforce

Date Posted: December 7, 2021

Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, Workforce,

PERSPECTIVE

by Tom Finan, Executive Director, Construction Forum

Last Thursday (Dec. 2) a Construction Forum program began what is intended to be a “systems change” approach to an inclusive construction workforce pipeline for the region.  The program was keynoted by Orv Kimbrough, CEO and Chairman of Midwest BankCentre.

The entire program was livestreamed by Solstice Productions on YouTube. Video of that livestream is available on this page. It took a ton of work by our team at the Forum led by Diana Wilhold, deputy executive director/COO and the Solstice team led Amanda Aschinger, producer and video producer. My special thanks to Dede Hance and Shruthi Beedu of the Forum and Andrea Bruemmer and Bobby Best of Solstice for your talented work and for your patience with me during a very involved production process.

Following Orv’s presentation those in attendance participated in an interactive poll using the SLIDO app.  The audience — which included a spectrum of people from construction, education, public policy, and community agencies — was asked about their positions and what they like about their jobs. They were asked to describe in a single word the effectiveness of workforce programs for diversity and inclusion, as well as the current state of those issues.

The results of the SLIDO poll were used to conduct facilitated sessions to discuss five critical barriers to a more inclusive construction workforce (the topics selected were chosen by the audience from a list of 22 barriers).

The top five barriers were:

• Old Boy Network (63%)
• Knowledge Re Career Pathways (58%)
• Education Inequity (50%)
• Transportation (41%)
• Racism in Hiring (38%)

Group discussion facilitators were:

• Steve Bryant, career pathways manager for the Missouri Department of Education
• Crystal Allen Dallas, principal and founder of Excel Business Concepts PR/Marketing
• Steve Faust, business development/diversity coordinator of icon Mechanical
• Dr. John Gaal, director of the Worker Wellness Program for Missouri AFL-CIO
• Julie Ledbetter, special assistant for inclusive construction at Washington University

Changing the Systems

Julie Ledbetter must be given credit for planting the seed that resulted in last week’s program. Construction Forum was approached last Spring by a workforce collaborative effort that Julie convened. The group included construction consumers, contractors, and workforce organizations. We were asked to help envision what systems change approach to diverse workforce development in our region might look like.

Peter David Stroh, author of Systems Thinking for Social Change, also participated. Prior to that meeting Julie shared Peter Stroh’s book with me.

About 50 pages in, I went into our Deputy Executive Director/COO Diana Wilhold’s office and said, “This is the most eggheaded stuff (except I didn’t say stuff) I have ever read.” When I was 150 pages into it, I went back into her office and said, “This is what we’ve been working on at the Forum from the beginning.”

Our objective in presenting last week’s program was to create a “small win” where we:

• Brought together stakeholders – contractors, developers, unions, educators, public policy makers, and community-based agencies.
• Began to unpack how sub-systems such as transportation, education, healthcare, finance, etc. interact and impact our ability to build an inclusive robust workforce.

The efforts of that work will be used to inform a Forum workforce systems change work session planned for March 16 at Sheet Metal Workers Local 36 Hall.  At that session we – and we’re hoping that includes you – will begin to map our resources – what’s there, what isn’t, who is doing what well – and just as important where the gaps and flaws are in our workforce systems.

“The Accidental Banker”

Our keynote speaker, Orv Kimbrough, serves as Chairman and CEO of Midwest BankCentre, St. Louis’ second largest privately held bank. He refers to himself as “The Accidental Banker”. Orv is unlike any other bank CEO in the nation. From humble beginnings in the St. Louis Public Schools and the State of Missouri foster care systems, he became an inspiring leader who has boosted the life trajectory of tens of thousands of people.

I met Orv when he was CEO of the United Way of Greater St. Louis, following stints with several nonprofits. There he led a transformational systems change process directed at getting services to people and paying providers for performance, innovation and collaboration that is being emulated by United Way organizations worldwide.

It was my involvement as part of ad hoc groups that helped facilitate the United Way’s systems change process, and my observation of Orv’s vision at the bank, that led me to believe that he would be the perfect person to help launch our exploration into systems change in the construction workforce.

Orv began his address with a question: “Why did Tom invite me to speak here today?,” he asked.

“Maybe it’s because he knows my background as the CEO of the United Way of Greater St. Louis where we worked to understand the systems necessary to stabilize people’s lives and act on that knowledge. Or perhaps it’s because he knows my story of becoming the accidental banker and Midwest BankCentre’s efforts to democratize access to opportunity and capital for all. Both of those career achievements and my body of work were unlikely given what could have been the trajectory of my life and the prevailing attitudes around race.

“I believe that Tom invited me here because he knows that I have an appreciation for life, the opportunities I have been exposed to, the doors that have been opened, the friendships that I have acquired across the income and racial spectrum. He knows my appreciation for the mentors in my life who have helped me navigate tough circumstances and systems.

“Tom knows that I have a great love for the St. Louis region in all of its complexity. He knows that I believe that you can live in a place, love a place while at the same time hold high ideals about what that place can become. I believe fundamentally that the quality of our lives is intimately related to the nature of our aspirations….and I want the St. Louis region to aspire to greatness, not mediocrity.”

Orv told of his upbringing in the foster care system in North St. Louis and a revelation he had while in college.

“My area of study—social work—grabbed my attention like no other,” he said. “At its core, social work is about understanding people within the context of their environment. It’s about looking at the whole person. About asking. “What happened to you?’ instead of ‘What is wrong with you?'”

“The very act of framing the question that way acknowledges that there are root causes to behavior,” Orv observed. “An individual’s behavior cannot be adequately understood without considering his or her broader environment and the systems that surround them. I have been thinking a lot about our systems over the last 20 years. I believe that human systems are designed to conspire for or against our success.

“While race is a social construct that some have the privilege not to see, I see the impact of race every day. It is hard to deny that racism, defined as the systemic allocation of resources that doles out influence, justice and economic opportunity based on skin color, doesn’t exist. It is hard to deny that race doesn’t influence every aspect of one’s life from housing, healthcare, employment, education and yes in my industry, banking.

“Shared prosperity is about sharing power, providing justice, and nurturing the conditions for creating wealth. Wealth creation is about the ability to work and earn a living wage, to own a home, to start or scale a business, to educate our children, and to live a healthy self-determined life. It is about giving everybody a place at the starting line.”

Getting to Work

After Orv finished his presentation, our audience rolled up their sleeves and began the hard work of figuring out how to change our construction workforce system.

One of my favorite quotes comes from the film A League of Their Own, about the Women’s All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

The quote is, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would be doing it. The hard is what makes it great.”

The thing is – just as with a baseball team – if everybody does what they do well, understands the role of their teammates and works collectively without caring who gets the credit, we will win.