Follow My Path: National Award-Winning Innovation Proposal

Second Mile Consulting (2MC) President, Michael Bolton, led a team of partners from public/private entities including Employ Milwaukee (the Milwaukee Workforce Board), Milwaukee One Stop Operator, job seekers, and local employers in researching, designing, and submitting an award-winning innovative proposal to the US Department of Labor. The team’s project, Follow My Path was recognized at a White House event and identified as a promising evidence-based practice for workforce programs nationally.

Michael’s role in Follow My Path included:

1. Leading the team through the customer-centered design’s prototype- evaluate-and-iterate project;

   
   

2. Structuring and writing the team’s submittal to the US DOL; and

3. Speaking at the White House recognition event on behalf of the Follow My Path team.

Follow My Path was developed using IDEO’s Customer-Centered Design (CCD), an evidence-based methodology that uses industry-standard User Centered Design (UX) prototype, evaluate, and iterate techniques and applies them beyond the web to enhance in-person service interactions. Michael is certified by IDEO in Customer- Centered/Human-Centered Design as a result of this project.

Michael identified CCD as a powerful set of program management tools and processes to both evaluate needs and innovate solutions for the Milwaukee workforce development system. The team undertook an eight-week intensive project to apply the methodology beginning with a program evaluation including customer interviews and surveys to identify a key challenge for local workforce program clients. Our research found that job seekers struggled to be inspired or motivated to take entry- level positions because they could not see how it connected them to the career or higher-level job they really wanted. Traditional career pathway materials were dry, complicated, and failed to connect to job seekers’ ambition. What job seekers wanted was to see and hear from people like them who had recently been in their shoes, were now one or two steps further along, and could explain how they got there and where they could go next. In response, Follow My Path took up the challenge to make career pathway materials that were identifiable, understandable, and inspirational.

Project innovations included creating two-minute, video-based occupation overviews by professionals currently in those positions, using QR codes to hard-link between posters/flyers and the videos, and connecting these occupation overviews into simple career trees with multiple branches of advancement—some across industry sectors. The end result allowed career seekers to see and hear from workers in the entry-level role, at the immediate next level, and up to six years into the pathway making the career clear, credible, and inviting.