Enterprise Minnesota Magazine - Fall 2018

RELEVANT EDUCATION

Bemidji Career Academies leverages public/private input to prepare students for rewarding job opportunities

Helping Manufacturing Enterprises Grow Profitably FALL 2018

STEPPING

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Enterprise Minnesota’s Bob Kill asks Devinder Malhotra, Minnesota State’s new chancellor, how his system of colleges and tech schools will confront the challenge of creating manufacturing’s next generation.

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STEPPING UP

Enterprise Minnesota’s Bob Kill asks Devinder Malhotra, Minnesota State’s new chancellor, how his system of colleges and tech schools will confront the challenge of creating manufacturing’s next generation.

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PROFITABLE SUSTAINABILITY

THE VALUE OF ‘SOCIAL STYLE’

Industrial Louvers plots to double its size through products that maintain an ecological balance.

Enterprise Minnesota’s Abbey Hellickson interviews renowned HR expert David Collins about how giving employees better leadership skills might just cause them to stick around, too.

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2 Partnerships Collaboration between the public and private sectors will be integral to solving manufacturing’s search for workers.

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Relevant Education

Trades Warrior

The Political Agenda

Bemidji Career Academies leverages public/private input to prepare students for rewarding job opportunities.

Minnesota West’s Brad Thomas’ personal comeback helps launch the next generation of welders.

Employees. Employees. Employees.

Visit the Enterprise Minnesota website for more details on what’s covered in the magazine at www.enterpriseminnesota.org.

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FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

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bob kill Helping Manufacturing Enterprises Grow Profitably

Partnerships Collaboration between the public and private sectors will be integral to solving manufacturing’s search for workers

I

recently traveled to Winnipeg to present the findings of our latest State of Manufacturing® survey to the annual meeting of the Midwestern Legislative Conference, which was attended by some 400 state legislators and provincial policymakers. The experience revealed a couple significant insights and provided meaningful context for the Q&A interview I conducted on page 20 in this magazine with Minnesota State’s extraordinary new chancellor.

The fact that so many policymakers were drawn to discover how manufacturing executives describe their ongoing opportunities and challenges showed me (again) that manufacturers are increasingly getting acknowledged for being the job-creating engines of our economies. Where 10 years ago we sometimes struggled to find legislators who even knew their indistrict manufacturers, this conference revealed how those relationships today are much stronger and more interactive. Most of today’s policymakers—of all political persuasions—closely monitor how they can help their constituent manufacturers stay competitive in an increasingly complex marketplace.

(For the record, I also couldn’t help drawing more than a little pride that Enterprise Minnesota’s 10-year-old experiment in public opinion surveys, still unique, keeps finding new and diverse audiences, even internationally.)

I wasn’t surprised that most attendees were especially anxious about the skills gap, but I was impressed how policymakers in Winnipeg emphasized the value of solving the skills gap issue through public/ private cooperation. I didn’t hear one person proclaim that government could solve the problem if only we’d throw enough

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money at it. Nor did I hear anyone disparage government involvement and assert that the marketplace will fix it. (It won’t.)

Everyone seemed to conclude that the skills gap should be addressed with a sense of collaboration—a point of view that gets my enthusiastic endorsement.

Which leads me to my interview with Devinder Malhotra, Minnesota State’s newly appointed chancellor. Malhotra has a big job, and he knows it. He faces shrinking enrollment, severe budget constraints and quickly evolving workforce demands. He acknowledges that Minnesota State is the essential cog in preparing our demographically shrinking workforce to handle the needs of future economies. In response, he delivered one of my favorite quotes I’ve seen in the pages of our magazine.

“We cannot be overwhelmed by our budgetary stresses, as severe and challenging as they are,” he told me. “We will not be defined by our constraints, financial or otherwise. We will be defined by the innate potential and promise we deliver to the state of Minnesota.”

Part of that mission, he says, will be public/private collaboration. His presidents, he says, “have to be at the table in shaping the economic, social, and cultural agendas of their regions. We are not only stewards of the academic experience of our students, we’re also stewards of the communities from which we draw our students, and where our students go back and work.”

Bravo. It is an interesting interview with a compelling character. I urge you to read it.

Bob Kill is president and CEO of Enterprise Minnesota.

Publisher Lynn K. Shelton 9001:2015

Custom Publishing By

Creative Director Scott Buchschacher Contributing Photographers Joe McDonald Lynn Shelton Copy Editor Catrin Thorman

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WORKFORCE

Relevant Education Bemidji Career Academies leverages public/private input to prepare students for rewarding job opportunities

A

couple years ago, Brian Stefanich and several of his colleagues from Bemidji High School attended a meeting at Bemidji State University where they were introduced to the Bridges Career Academy, a consortium led by Central Lakes College and 28 schools in central Minnesota. Bridges is a comprehensive program that has achieved universally high praise for the way it creatively leverages the strengths of some 20-plus schools near Brainerd to prepare students for the job world through real-world experiences.

According to Stefanich, then the high school principal, the Bemidji-based team realized its own school community—in relationship with Bemidji State and Northwest Technical College—could create a

“This is cutting edge for our community right now.” similar program using only local resources.

Its high school already offered more than 250 courses through 14 departments and had long-standing post-secondary relationships with school-to-work programs, internships, and other opportunities for juniors and seniors to get out in the field.

So, the group of educators created the Bemidji Career Academies using a consortium of interests that included Bemidji High School, local businesses and industries, the Bemidji Area Chamber of Commerce, Greater Bemidji, the North Country Vocational Consortium, Northwest Technical College, Bemidji State University, the Northwest Minnesota Foundation, and the George W. Neilson Foundation.

Bemidji Career Academies can be

Brian Stefanich accepts a $1,000 grant from Wells Fargo. The funds would be applied to student transportation to area businesses for Job Shadowing and Internships, he said.

students’ pathway to careers through a set of high school courses, post-secondary courses, and work-related experiences with a business partnership.

“We want to train our students, and then we want to keep them here—because we have jobs,” Stefanich says. “The academies are a pipeline to fill those jobs.” The six new academies that launched this year were the result of direct input from “our business partners, our industry partners, and our contractors. They’re telling us, we need people. We have jobs, and we don’t

have qualified people. What can Bemidji High School do for us?”

Stefanich, who grew up in a family of teachers, is a lifetime educator and administrator who has worked mostly in Bemidji.

He felt so strongly about the potential of career academies that he left his job as Bemidji’s high school principal this past summer to become the director of Bemidji Career Academies and the principal of Bemidji’s alternative education program.

“It takes time,” he says. “You have to get out and talk to people and find out what

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In just two years, Bemidji schools have launched a dozen industry-specific academies. More than 500 of Bemidji High School’s 1,400 students have enrolled in at least one academy.

The program began last year with six core academies: • Business Management Career Academy • Construction Trades Career Academy • Health Careers Academy • Light, Sound and Video Technician Academy • Mechatronics Career Academy • Project Lead the Way Engineering Academy This year, they added six more: • Automotive Technology Career Academy • Aerospace Technology Academy • Art & Design Career Academy • Information Technology Career Academy • Child Care & Education Career Academy • Natural Resources Management Academy their needs are. The nice thing, though, is I already have those connections in our community. I know all our stakeholders.

We have great relationships. They know the direction that we’re going, and they are already getting our students.”

This year, about 500 of Bemidji High School’s 1,400 students have enrolled in at least one of the 12 academies.

Each academy recruits students by making its materials relevant to the real world.

Slickly designed brochures use highlygraphical and easily navigated descriptions of careers that are out there. They also cite the classes necessary for a career, the prospects of finding a job, and earning potential. For example, the Natural Resources Management Academy might lead to highdemand positions as an environmental engineer or a conservation scientist. Expected wages, according to the brochure, are $32 and $31 per hour, respectively.

Each academy includes a school-towork connection that might consist of job shadowing, internships, or work-based learning. Students can receive high school credit for these experiences by correlat4

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ing them with a formal work seminar.

Each seminar incorporates universal skills essential to workplace success, such as problem solving, decision making and critical thinking. Teachers also touch on resume building, interview preparation, and budgeting. The academies emphasize the value of soft skills as well, such as listening, problem solving, time management, professionalism, and honesty/ integrity, according to Stefanich.

Lumberjack High School, Bemidji’s alternative school, was designed for students struggling in a traditional school setting. Classroom size is capped at 20 students. Classtime is limited to 45-minute increments, half the length of classes in a conventional school. “I really

wanted to go the alternative ed route and pursue bringing the academies to a new level. I have so many individual success stories of students who I don’t think would have graduated from high school without the academy.”

“Some of these kids are working jobs just to bring money home to buy food, and they’re the ones babysitting their siblings when they get home.” Kids who were failing classes at Lumberjack High School and Bemidji High School were getting straight A’s at Mechatronics, the hands-on learning academy. “It is a different environment.”

He adds that the academy atmosphere stresses personal responsibility. “They get to wear their baseball hat, and they don’t have to ask permission to go to the bathroom if they need to go.”

Bemidji Career Academies currently operates on what Stefanich calls a shoestring budget of just $87,000 a year, which he raised in two grants from the George W. Neilson Foundation in Bemidji. He has five more applications in process and expects to write more to reach his goal of more than $2 million in the next couple of years. “I want to have my own team,” he says.

“My job, right now, is to take it to another level and continue to market our academies,” Stefanich says. Despite his efforts, he’s surprised that at every presentation, “a parent or two will pop up and say, ‘My son or daughter hasn’t told me about the academies yet.’ That tells me that I need to do more, I need to get into

our weekly homerooms.”

All students have advisors who meet each Wednesday morning for 45 minutes. Part of the curriculum is to talk about registration for next year’s classes. “When we start the (planning) process in January and February, we talk about the Academies. That’s one of those things where the kids hear it. They don’t necessarily bring it home, but when kids are registering for the classes now, they’re focused on their career and a field that they’re interested in.”

Stefanich and his team methodically market the school to its various constituent groups through breakfast presentations. They started with business leaders,

Bemidji Career Academies can be students’ pathway to careers through a set of high school courses, post-secondary courses, and work-related experiences with a business partnership. then banks and marketing, moving next to contractors and the construction trades in conjunction with the chamber of commerce and Greater Bemidji. “It’s truly a community effort,” he says.

The Academies tap their private sector advisors for insight on how to maximize the value of the school’s offerings. Each academy has an in-school faculty lead teamed with a community partner. These teams outline what courses to require and tweak the way they are taught.

Stefanich points out, for example, that community leaders said using pencils, paper, and T-squares to teach drafting was passé. So, they replaced drafting tables with 32 new computers, all loaded with Computer Assisted Drawing (CAD) applications.

“This is cutting edge for our community right now,” Stefanich says. He’s currently visiting stakeholders to ask where the Academies should extend and expand their curriculum. He is also contemplating adding law enforcement, fire rescue, or culinary arts, and maybe even an agriculture academy for 4H students.

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Willmar CEO students learn from guest speakers, participate in a business class, write business plans, and start and operate their own businesses.

YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS

High School CEOs A Willmar high school class teaches students about practical business and creates strong relationships with local businesses

T

yler Gehrking was in his sixth year of teaching at Willmar High School when his principal asked him to use his lunch hour to video-record a meeting by Craig Lindvahl, an Illinois-based educator.

Lindvahl founded the Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship, an education group that creates local coalitions of business leaders and schools to give high school students hands-on experience about what it means to be an entrepreneur.

The meeting of some 80 business people, educators, and community leaders was

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organized by Gary Geiger, a local banker and manufacturer, who had heard Lindvahl speak when he was a board member of the Southwest Initiative Foundation.

Gehrking, a life-long resident of Willmar and himself a graduate of Willmar High School, was blown away by Lindvahl’s Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities (CEO) program, in which students sign up for a year-long before-school program that is taught entirely offsite by local business people, and wholly underwritten by them.

Students also learn from guest speakers,

participate in a business class, write business plans, and start and operate their own businesses. “Business concepts learned through the experiential CEO class are critical,” says the CEO curriculum. “The 21st century skills of problem solving, teamwork, self-motivation, responsibility, higher-order thinking, communication, and inquiry are at the heart of a student’s development throughout the course.”

Lindvahl struck a chord with his audience, who voted enthusiastically to organize a CEO program for Willmar. School Superintendent Jeff Holm went so far as to suggest Gehrking run the program. “When your superintendent does that, you just say yes,” Gehrking said.

“Being a teacher, I thought entrepreneurship was a boring business term, and I was not interested in any way. My idea of it was learning from a textbook and writing a business plan—nothing at all what the reality is.”

Gehrking’s class of 22 students typically

meets Monday through Friday during the school year from 7:15 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., well before the start of the first-hour class. They meet at host businesses and divide their time between touring businesses, hearing from guest speakers or working on projects.

“I don’t actually teach anything related to entrepreneurship outside of professionalism and communication— how you should leave a voice mail and how you should shake hands,” Gehrking says. “All of the technical stuff about running a business and all of the project work is taught by our industry leaders.”

The class culminates as students work with their business contacts to conceive and start their own businesses.

The class is underwritten by $1,000 contributions from 54 local business investors, part of which supports Gehrking. The school district pays nothing.

Those businesses also pledge to help mentor students, teach classes, and provide company tours.

There is no set curriculum, Gehrking says. “Our job is to prepare kids for the real world. We let them learn, network with these professionals, and then discover how their skill sets fit their learning. Pooling all of the different skill sets together, we have a pretty cool learning experience for our kids throughout the entire school year.”

“Anyone and everyone can apply to get in, and there are no GPA requirements. We also don’t have any prerequisites; we just want students inclined to succeed in an environment that requires entrepreneurial thinking.”

In the first year, Gehrking accepted all 15 students who applied. In the class that began this September, he was able to take only 22 of the 50 who applied. “We don’t really have to do any marketing or selling to students anymore,” Gehrking says. “The experience just kind of speaks for itself.”

A serious value of the program is that students realize they don’t have to leave home to have a satisfying career.

On the second day of his first-year class, Gehrking polled class members on whether they expected to live and work as adults in Kandiyohi County.

Ninety percent said no. On the last day of class, he asked the same question and discovered startling reversal: ninety percent said yes.

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Chuck Miller, Winona Daily News

Brad Thomas is a customized training services coordinator at Minnesota West Community and Technical College.

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rad Thomas, a customized training services coordinator at Minnesota West Community and Technical College, takes justifiable pride in the achievements of his team at this year’s SkillsUSA welding competition for Minnesota. SkillsUSA is a nationwide career and technical student organization with more than 395,000 high school, college and middle school students and professional members enrolled in training programs.

For one thing, the six students who comprised Thomas’ team—three adults, three high school students—were the first team to represent Minnesota West (formerly Worthington Community College) in 23 years. For another, five of the six placed in the top 25 statewide. And one high school student finished in third place.

Plus, Thomas has to feel good about how Minnesota West’s surging welding program emblemizes his own professional turnaround.

Just four years ago, Thomas was an unemployed welder and single parent trying to raise four teenage sons in a $500 per month trailer house in Minneota. A construction accident had left him with a broken back that would require an 18-month convalescence and would keep him from ever returning to his once lucrative career as a construction welder.

Thomas attained a welding degree in 1986 by attending post-secondary courses while still attending Canby High School.

Two years later he received a degree as a construction electrician, and he became a master electrician at age 28. He then went on to own his own business. “I’ve wired just about everything from an outhouse to an ethanol plant.”

A few months into his back recovery, he stopped by the weld shop at a technical high school in Marshall, after dropping his sons off for class. There, he encountered Danny Long, who had been Thomas’ weld-

ing instructor in 1986.

They hadn’t talked in almost 30 years.

Long asked what Thomas was doing.

“Going crazy,” he said. “I’ve worked since I was 13 years old.” Long invited Thomas to job-shadow him at the school, which he did every day for two months. In January, the school offered him a teaching position.

The following year Thomas became a customized training coordinator at Minnesota West.

In that position, he oversees the welding program at Marshall Area Technical Education Center, a part of Marshall’s public schools that offers students more individualized training. In its second year, the program’s popularity grew from eight students to two cohorts of 12 students each. This year, he expects to have 15 students in each class by permitting adult students to enroll, as well.

Thomas considers it a mission. “The trades are suffering really bad right now,” he says, in part because of a long absence in priority from public schools. “We’re headed for a train wreck.”

Thomas says schools largely abandoned the trades about 25 years ago, doing away with high school technical programs, such as wood or metal shops. “They said you weren’t going to go anywhere in this country unless you had a four-year college degree.” And now he says, for every two electricians that edge toward retirement, “we’re lucky to get one youngster that’ll come into the trade.”

His message to students: “If you’re willing to work with your hands and willing to learn a trade, you’re setting yourself up on a very good career path that’s going to be very, very lucrative by the time you get to be my age.”

The program helps enculturate students for the workplace, not the classroom. “We run that program just like we would if they were punching into a welding job,” he says. “Everybody’s accountable; everybody’s expected to act like an adult ... zero tolerance for cell phones.”

“You can just see it over time, as kids keep progressing, how they start maturing into that position,” Thomas says. “Not a hundred percent, obviously, but at least we’re getting them the groundwork to get them steered in the right direction, where otherwise they wouldn’t have had that.”

“That tells me that we’re doing the right thing,” he says, “or at least we’re moving in the right direction.”

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You make things.

We ship things.

Joe Plunger, president and CEO of Midwest Metal Products, recently described his innovations to Representative Gene Pelowski (left) and Senator Jeremy Miller (right).

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Hopkins-based manufacturer signs licensing deal with PGA, plots future growth in construction, industrial, military, and food prep industries Editor’s Note: This is the first of an ongoing series that provides updates on companies previously profiled in Enterprise Minnesota magazine.

N

oSweat was the subject of a full feature in the Fall 2017 edition of Enterprise Minnesota magazine.

In August, NoSweat announced it had become an Official Licensed Partner of the PGA Tour, and part of a notable roster of investors and partners, including a growing number of athletes. It has come a long way from its roots as a business-class project at Gustavus Adolphus College.

NoSweat— a Hopkins-based com-

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pany—is operated by three high school and college buddies and based on the very simple concept that people who wear helmets or hats for work or play tend to sweat under their lids. And they don’t want to. Until NoSweat, there was no solution to that problem.

Starting out when they were still students at Gustavus, brothers Justin and J.T. Johnson adapted the technology around superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) to develop and patent a disposable helmet/hat liner that absorbs and eliminates forehead moisture (through its Dri-LID™ Technology) and extinguishes most related odors (through its No Scent™ Technology). The

sweat absorbing disposable liner works with hats, helmets, hard hats, and visors. Its simple peel and stick application enables users to stay dry on-the-go and works with any sports or outdoor activity that involves headwear.

Beginning their business in 2011 with a laser focus as a hockey product, the company appears to be even more on the verge of significantly expanding its markets to include sports (baseball, football, golf, hockey, lacrosse, and cycling) and creating new B to B distribution channels with safety relevance (industrial, construction, manufacturing and transportation) and others, from farming to food service to the military.

Adding CFO Jon Marshalla and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer Collin Iacarella along the way, the company began deploying an aggressive social media strategy based on thought-leader endorsements. The company has recently inked sports-centered deals with Golden Tate, a wide receiver with the Detroit Lions, and Brandon McManus, a placekicker with the Denver Broncos. For baseball, they scored Houston Astros’ pitcher Dallas Keuchel. And in hockey, they recently secured an endorsement from T.J. Oshie, a right winger with the Washington Capitals. In hockey alone, NoSweat has already earned bulk sales agreements with 20 NHL teams, which it expects this year will grow to all 31 teams in the league. Also, the company has a 20,000-product standing order with the NHL referees’ association.

“Golf has been a space that has seen tremendous success and validity for the brand,” said NoSweat Chief Operating Officer Jared Robins. “We are a top seller in the golf space on Amazon and have strong distribution in golf stores and pro shops nationwide. As a small startup seeing exponential growth over the last year, we couldn’t be more excited to become an officially licensed partner of the PGA Tour.”

The company says future growth will evolve from its focus on expanding markets in the construction, industrial, military, and food prep industries in the coming months.

The business expects to launch another round of investor financing, solely focused on new markets.

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PROFILE

Extraordinary Tenacity Using remarkable entrepreneurial drive, Evotronics’ Tam Tran created a fundamentally American success story

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T

ucked in a modern industrial park in Brooklyn Park, Evotronics is an eight-person familyrun manufacturer. Since 1995, it has designed, manufactured, tested, distributed, and provided return/ repair services for electronic components and assemblies to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

But even more than that is the company’s impressive American success story.

Anh Tran Ken Nguyen Today Evotronics is co-owned

by Anh Tran and her brother, Ken Nguyen. Anh runs the business car and drove west, looking for opporwhile Ken oversees plant operations. Six tunities with relatives in Bloomington, of the company’s eight employees are Minnesota. A mechanic by training, Tran relatives. worked at Specialty Motor Cycle until its plant shut down.

An inveterate entrepreneur, Tran in 1990 Tran took a soldering class opened a grocery store near Lake Street at Hennepin Tech and then in Minneapolis that specialized in fresh opened his business “with seafood. At least twice a month, he would drive to the Chicago docks and sometimes just a soldering iron and a even to Texas to personally pick fish and small rented warehouse in drive back for the store. But Tran’s efforts were shut down when he rolled the truck Brooklyn Park.” on an icy Iowa turnpike and broke his neck.

He was forced to shutter the store and his Anh tells the story of how family convalescence took two years. patriarch Tam Tran, her father, founded In 1995, Tran became intrigued with the company following a rather circuitous business opportunities as a soldering geographical and professional route, and subcontractor. He took a soldering class how he showed remarkable entrepreneurial at Hennepin Tech and then opened his tenacity as well as an ability to overcome business “with just a soldering iron and misfortune along the way. a small rented warehouse in Brooklyn Tran and his wife, Huong Nguyen, fled Park.” Along the way Anh, then 15 years Vietnam on a private boat with 40 other old, joined the company, learning to solder family members after the fall of Saigon. and operate the SMT placement system They were stranded at sea for 27 days, machines inherent in that industry. being rebuffed in the Philippines, Malaysia, The company recently achieved its ISO and Singapore. Family lore has it that they 9000 designation, working with Enterprise had to sink the boat to be rescued. They Minnesota. were saved, shipped to a refugee camp in The ISO designation will help keep the Malaysia, and eventually immigrated to company competitive, according to Anh. Hawaii.

“Contract manufacturing is competitive,” From there, they relocated to Maryland she says. “But Evotronics tries to be flexwhere they had relatives. But, they couldn’t ible to respond to the needs of its customers find work, so Tran and his wife got in the through quality, lead times, and pricing.”

COALITION BUILDING

Working Together Southeast manufacturers stress the value of being together

E

nterprise Minnesota cohosted an event in Rochester designed to highlight the dynamic growth opportunities for manufacturing in southeast Minnesota. Other hosts were Rochester Area Economic Development, Inc. and Journey to Growth, a regional economic development project.

Bob Kill, Enterprise Minnesota’s president and CEO, presented the findings of the 2018 State of Manufacturing® survey, which was followed by a panel discussion of local manufacturing executives.

“It was an invigorating event with knowledgeable and insightful back and forth,” says Lynn Shelton, Enterprise Minnesota’s vice president of marketing. “The manufacturers emphasized the shortage of workers—

skilled and unskilled alike. They appeared very willing to engage local technical colleges but also local public schools. They see the value of starting with middle school students and younger.”

While the event was designed for manufacturers only, many attendees invited legislators, educators, and economic developers as their guests, according to Shelton.

“The lesson is, as always, that we’re stronger when we work together. But to work together you have to be together,” Shelton says. “And meetings like this represent a terrific start.”

She says the meeting reminded her of ten years ago, when Enterprise Minnesota unveiled the State of Manufacturing® (SOM)

as part of a “nexus” strategy that sought to give manufacturers greater connectedness to each other and to community leaders and policymakers. She remembers observing that Minnesota’s manufacturers—especially small and mid-size—disdained “politics” and were content to merely greet policymakers at the monthly chamber meetings, but otherwise focused on efficiently making and aggressively marketing their widgets.

Shelton thinks the crash of 2009 may have helped change this mindset. As Enterprise Minnesota conducted its first round of focus groups and released the results through community outreach meetings, Shelton says, “We saw that manufacturers, educators, policymakers and civic activists became increasingly aware of the importance of their relationships.” Enterprise Minnesota uses the SOM to try to keep that coalition alive.

“The event was as important for the fact that we had it, as for the subject matter.

Manufacturers need to identify themselves as Minnesotans, but also identify by their regions. The challenges and opportunities manufacturers face can differ dramatically by location.”

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Industry Leaders

PROFITABLE

SUSTAINABILITY Industrial Louvers plots to double its size through products that maintain an ecological balance

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/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018

tomers would include designers, contractors and subcontractors across all segments of the construction industry throughout the United States.

Reinhardt joined the company as a 28-year-old part-time drafter in 1982 while her father was in the process of acquiring Precision Air Products Company, a Chicago-based manufacturer of air diffusers from clean room applications.

Over the next seven years, her in-house portfolio eventually encompassed estimating, project management and marketing.

Enough breadth, she thought, that on her father’s retirement in 1988, she announced her ambition to eventually take over Industrial Louvers and run it.

“I didn’t expect to do it immediately,” she recalls, knowing her father’s frequently-stated concerns about the negative perceptions of nepotism. “It was made very clear that there would be no favoritism and that I would have to wait for any position to open before I moved anywhere in the company.”

That said, she was surprised and disappointed when he told her that she lacked

“Every sunshade you buy actually makes the world a better place. That’s something that people can really get behind, and something our employees are really enthusiastic about.” the skills and temperament to handle the emotional stress of the job. “I don’t think my dad ever had the vision of me taking the company over. He didn’t feel I had the education, the experience, or the emotional fortitude to run the company.”

Sterriker arranged some career counseling and professional assessments for his daughter, some that confirmed his instincts, she now admits. But there were also surprises, such as her strong analytical skills.

Undaunted, she moved ahead. She enrolled at the University of St. Thomas, where in four years she received a degree in operations management, all while main-

Photo by Joe McDonald

J

o Reinhardt, CEO of Delano-based Industrial Louvers, has guided her company to head-turning sales, a plant expansion, and nation-leading innovation with a company-wide emphasis on environmental sustainability. But due to a striking instance of anti-nepotism from her father, the company founder, Reinhardt almost never got the chance to prove herself. Reinhardt’s father initially cast doubt that his daughter had the background or temperament to take the reins of the company.

James Sterriker and a group of investors founded Industrial Louvers in 1971 when they purchased the industrial division of Louvers Manufacturing, which was in the process of relocating from Eden Prairie to Little Rock, Arkansas. Sterriker relocated his new company to a plant in Delano, which he bought from ACP, a soon-tobe-bankrupt manufacturer of industrial dampers.

Industrial Louvers would eventually manufacture architectural louvers, equipment screens, decorative grilles, sunshades, column covers and other products. Its cus-

Jo Reinhardt, CEO, and Lisa Britton, director of sales and marketing.

Reinhardt’s reign took a significant step in 2014 when the company produced a 10-year strategic plan that envisioned the company to double in size. To accommodate growth, the company recently completed a $7.5 million, 40,000-squarefoot addition to its facility, and is finishing a $2 million, 3,700-square-foot build out of its office space. The manufacturing space significantly reduces energy consumption and creates a better working environment for employees by incorporating natural daylight.

FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

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taining a 30-hour workweek at the company.

In 1999, when Sterriker’s successor-CEO announced his retirement, Reinhardt got the job.

“I did win him over,” Reinhardt says, “but it still took a few years for him to fully accept that I could be successful.” His acknowledgment became complete in the early 2000s, she says, when the Air Movement and Control Association (AMCA International) named Reinhardt to its board of directors, and in 2006 to a term as president of the prestigious industry association.

“That’s when it finally really sunk in to him that I had arrived,” she says.

Reinhardt’s reign took a significant step in 2014 when Industrial Louvers produced a 10-year strategic plan that envisioned the company to double in size. To accommodate growth, the company recently completed a $7.5 million, 40,000-square-foot addition to its facility, and is finishing a $2 million, 3,700-square-foot build-out of its office space.

The manufacturing space significantly reduces energy consumption and creates a better working environment for employees by incorporating natural daylight. The company’s new paint line will eliminate chemicals and integrate energy saving technology through infrared ovens and LED lighting. The office space will enable the company to add a planned 11 employees to its team.

A key component of Reinhardt’s strategic plan was to expand Industrial Louvers’ “sustainability.” She knew instinctively that sustainability would play a significant role in the sunshades line that Industrial Louvers established in the late 1990s, but “I didn’t know how to capitalize on that.”

Her challenge was to persuade builders and owners of the cost-saving opportunities without yet having documentation.

Enter Lisa Britton, a Minneapolis-based entrepreneur and acknowledged sustainability zealot. Britton reached out to Reinhardt on LinkedIn in 2014, after a mutual friend alerted her that Industrial Louvers was looking for someone to lead sales and 16

/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018

marketing.

“The building product specialty world is very small,” Britton says. She was impressed by Reinhardt’s commitment to becoming a market leader in the sustainability movement. And she also admired Reinhardt’s entrepreneurial approach to the company. “She is not somebody who was handed a company. She created a new vision to kind of go to the next level.”

Britton was immediately impressed by the attitude of the entire company. “One of the things that helps predict success in environmental initiatives is if the employees of the company have connections with the outdoors. And I found that immediately when I started working at Industrial Louvers, like everybody hunts or fishes or camps, or does outdoorsy type things and is connected with nature.”

Britton also had entrepreneurial bona fides. In February 2009, she launched Alpar Architectural Products in Minneapolis, a company that helped develop the first

fire-rated bio-based polymer for interior finish use, of particular value in health care environments.

“A lot more hospitals are now looking at trying to create spaces that don’t actually cause disease,” she says. “The logic being that it doesn’t make sense to try and cure cancer in buildings that cause cancer.” She eventually sold her company to a larger one, staying on as president, but left when the new owners put the brakes on her sustainable plans.

Since the early 2000s, Britton has devoted her career to improving the environmental and human health effects of manufacturing. “I started to realize that the only way to really drive change in the industry was to be part of creating that demand by bringing awareness to things like chemical transparency, which is a big part of what Industrial Louvers is doing now.”

Britton thinks manufacturers are uniquely positioned as sustainability change agents. “I am very much a believer in market-driven solutions for some of these complex problems,” she says. “The chemical makeup of things isn’t an area where the government has ever been a real driver. Without manufacturers as part of that solution, there won’t ever be any progress made. You can talk about wanting products all you want, but somebody’s got to make them.”

SUSTAINABILITY

Industrial Louvers emphasizes that its commitment to sustainable operations reduces the company’s environmental impact, according to Britton. Sun control products help achieve the goals of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), Green Globes, the Living Building Challenge and other rating systems, or simply fulfill the spirit of these systems by reducing energy consumption and increasing occupant comfort. Exterior sunshades have a critical impact on cooling and lighting systems and, when used properly, significantly reduce buildings’ energy loads.

Britton says Industrial Louvers’ sunshade products actually save more energy and water throughout their lifecycles, as well as reduce the effects of climate change.

“They’re actually net positive,” she says.

They also reflect sunlight from buildings to reduce heat island effect and diminish glare, minimizing energy consumption and fostering a more pleasant occupant experience. Interior light shelves maximize daylight and reduce glare without affecting views to the outdoors.

“Every sunshade you buy actually makes the world a better place. That’s something that people can really get behind, and something our employees are really enthusiastic about.”

Britton says the company strives for continuous improvement throughout its operations. Its internal green team sets goals and priorities, educates staff, and implements sustainability strategies throughout the organization. Industrial

Reinhardt’s reign took a significant step in 2014 when Industrial Louvers produced a 10year strategic plan that envisioned the company to double in size. To accommodate growth, the company recently completed a $7.5 million, 40,000-square-foot addition to its facility, and is finishing a $2 million, 3,700-square-foot buildout of its office space.

Louvers is among the first manufacturers pursuing the International Living Future Institute’s (ILFI) Living Product Challenge and is the first manufacturer in the United States to earn the JUST label. The JUST label is ILFI’s social justice “nutrition label,” a means of assessing Industrial Louvers’ impact on and contributions to employees’ well-being, environmental sustainability, the local community, and society as a whole.

“The Living Product Challenge analyzes all of our operations, how we treat our people, where it sources products, as well as its internal policies for community involvement. Sourcing products has environmental impacts, and it also has impacts

on our community,” Britton says.

Industrial Louvers sources all materials from within a 500-kilometer radius of its facility, according to Britton, which Depend on Our People. reduces its carbon footprint. “That was Count on Our Advice. step one in the process,” she says. Further, the company discloses all materials in its products and pushes suppliers to do likewise.

“Some of the more forward-thinking architectural firms are asking for some of this information. We’re not only providing it to them, but we’re kind of educating the market on it, as well. From that aspect, we reported all the chemical information in our products. That helps us select our suppliers.”

Suppliers unwilling to comply don’t make it on Industrial Louvers’ list of preferred vendors, Britton says.

Industrial Louvers teamed with Valspar to start working with a new paint formulaRoseville 651-483-4521 tion that eliminates heavy metals from its finishes. With significantly reduced Eden Prairie 952-941-9242 hazardous materials, these coatings are formulated with material transparency and environmental impacts in mind. Fluotcpas.com ropon Pure coatings offer opportunities to comply with material disclosure and optimization credits in LEED® V4 and comply with Red List Free requirements for Living Product Challenge projects. OLT_18_XXX.EnterpriseMagazine_August_2018_2.indd 1 8/17/18 “We’re actually the first chrome free 9001:2015 finisher in the country,” Britton says.

“That is a really big deal.”

Britton acknowledges that some of these pretreat chemicals are slightly more expensive, but that has not changed the prices for the customer. “We’re a custom manufacturer. Our base pricing to our customers has remained the same,” she says.

Industrial Louvers’ commitment goes beyond its own operations and providing products for green building projects. The company actively supports organizations that promote sustainability and environmental awareness industry-wide, such as the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC). Its LEED-accredited professionals provide training for enterpriseminnesota.org staff and sales representatives throughout the industry on a variety of topics related to green building.

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Britton thinks manufacturers are uniquely positioned as sustainability change agents. “I am very much a believer in marketdriven solutions for some of these complex problems,” she says. with roughly half of those employees working in the factory and the other half working in the office.

Industrial Louvers’ commitment to sustainability has earned it a “cool factor” among certain prospective employees, as it fights the same skills gap challenges that plague all manufacturers, especially those that are far away from regional population centers. “We have a lot of people that are coming here who simply don’t have the skills that we need to perform our work. It affects our ability to grow,” Britton says.

On the other hand, she says, “employees are really excited.” The company recently lured an engineer from Los Angeles who Britton says was attracted to the company’s commitment to sustainability. It’s also had a positive impact on recruiting the sometimes difficult to recruit/retrain millennials because, Britton says, “The millennial genera-

tion is looking for companies that don’t just look at making money but look at making the world a better place. The whole purpose of a living product is not only to be at a net zero in terms of our damage but actually create regenerative products.”

The company’s commitment to sustainability is less of an attraction on the factory side than it is on the drafters, estimators, and project management staff, according to Britton. “But certainly, we have some folks in the shop that have absolutely embraced it and are working on continuously improving in terms of the actual daily operations of the shop.”

Industrial Louvers also works hard to be fully transparent with employees.

“Any employee can know how much we’ve sold and booked and everything every day,” Britton says.

CEO Reinhardt agrees, saying that certain core values are a company priority. “The wellbeing of our employees is one of my top values. We want to make sure that we have good connections with families and the community.”

“It’s been slowly building, but we’re starting to see some traction. More and more architects are starting to demand that suppliers include sustainability in how they do business. With our whole Living Product Challenge, we’re starting to see more and more demand from the architectural side of things, and owners want it. Because we went through and did a lifecycle analysis on our sunshades, we now know that there is a definite payback on the end. We’re able to bring that to owners and say, ‘This works.’”

“We haven’t probably fully realized the entire (cost) benefit on that, but we do feel that number one, it’s the right thing to do. I think that long term it will payoff to being a leader in that industry.

I think we’re going to be able to see the benefit of it.”

Ultimately, Reinhardt says, her company’s secret sauce is its people. “You have to surround yourself with people who know and understand your own weaknesses, and make sure you have other people that complement where there are weaknesses and strengths.

Having that good workforce, great communication, transparency with everything that we do, why we do it and how we do it, just having a common vision, it is all so important.”

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Interview

STEPPING UP As manufacturers face an unprecedented shortage of workers—skilled and otherwise—Enterprise Minnesota’s Bob Kill asks Devinder Malhotra, Minnesota State’s new chancellor, how his system of universities, colleges and tech schools will confront the challenge of educating and training manufacturing’s next generation.

I’m not sure all our readers fully understand the breadth and scope of what the Minnesota State system brings to our state. Could you start by describing the system that you oversee?

We are a network of 37 institutions, with 54 campuses spread across the state.

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We have a little over 250,000 students enrolled in our programs. Almost 375,000 students utilize our services every year, with about 120,000 of them for non-credit basis like continuing education or customized training. We’re also the most diverse higher education provider in the state of

Minnesota: We have 63,000 students of color and 84,000 students from lowincome families.

How many graduates do you have in the state? It has to be a huge number.

They have declined a little in the last

We cannot be overwhelmed by our budgetary stresses, as severe and challenging as they are. We will not be defined by our constraints, financial or otherwise.

We will be defined by the innate potential and promise we deliver to the state of Minnesota.

Our annual State of Manufacturing® survey shows us that workforce issues permeate everything manufacturing executives are thinking about. They understand that better strategic planning and continuous improvement are essential to everything they do—not just talking about it, but really doing it. In that sense, the Minnesota State system is by far the most critical asset we have in developing the workforce. How do you see that changing? We’re hearing a lot about how you are trying to consolidate the power of your individual campuses across the state, making it truly a system rather than a loose federation of a bunch of campuses.

We are an integrated system. We can meet the workforce needs at any level called for by the economy. We can provide skills at the technical level; we can provide professional education at the baccalaureate level; we can provide engineering degrees at the master’s level. And similarly, the landscape of our learning is also spread out. We have traditional modes, but we also have project-based curriculum. For example, Minnesota State University–Mankato

Photo by Lynn Shelton

few years because of declining enrollment, but we still had 38,000 students graduate in 2016. Our 2017 data has not been fully formulated. Out of those 38,000 graduates, two-thirds of them graduated from one of 30 colleges. And a third of them graduated from one of our seven universities.

I would say about two-thirds of college graduates are in career and technical education programs. That’s close to 19,000 to 20,000 graduates a year. Eight percent of them are taking manufacturing programs.

Devinder Malhotra was named the chancellor of Minnesota State in March 2018. He had served as interim chancellor since August 2017.

Malhotra has served in leadership positions at other Minnesota State universities. He was interim president of Metropolitan State University from 2014 to 2016, and provost and vice president for academic affairs at St. Cloud State University from 2009 to 2014.

Previously, he served as the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern Maine from 2005 to 2009 and as associate dean of the Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Akron. He also served as a tenured professor of economics at the University of Southern Maine and the University of Akron.

Malhotra holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Delhi and a doctorate from Kansas State University. He has also completed the Management Development Program of the Harvard Institutes for Higher Education.

offers a four-year engineering program on the Iron Range in collaboration with Itasca Community College, and others. That’s a great example where students are not in the classroom, but in the workplace. And, we create a curriculum for them through the projects they are working on. They can learn all they would have learned in the classroom while actually doing hands-on work under the stewardship of an industry mentor, along with the faculty mentor.

So, we have a whole gamut of curricular designs by which we promote and deliver education. And, in that regard, you’re right.

We are the major player.

The other aspect is that the knowledge content of all occupations is increasing as we speak. Today’s economy is very different than what traditionally was referred to as the industrial economy. There is no such thing as a low skill; 74 percent of the emerging jobs in Minnesota will require some post-secondary credential, half of

them will require a baccalaureate degree.

Now, add two other salient facts: One is our demographics are declining; as a state, we are becoming an “older state.”

At the same time, we’re becoming more diverse. We will be drawing students from populations that have had historically low participation rates in higher education and are economically fragile. In other words, their ability to pay for education is also severely constrained. That’s why those labor-shortage numbers are increasing so dramatically.

Manufacturing executives told our pollster that one solution to the skills gap would be for colleges to “enroll more students.” That may sound wonderful, but it’s fictional. How would you respond to them? What are some things our clients might embrace that are already occurring in their own communities?

I don’t think they necessarily mean FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

21

enroll more students; they probably mean they would like to see more graduates or more credentialed individuals coming out of our colleges and universities. These businesses have to realize there is a problem of size in terms of the shortage, but there is also a problem of composition. They need to ask themselves what kinds of skills do they currently have within their workforce, what kinds of skills will they need, and what is the timeframe in which that mismatch needs to be rectified for businesses to thrive? Then they should look at their existing workforce—the element I refer to as the incumbent worker—and identify the opportunities for their existing workforce to readapt and retool their skill portfolios at

We can meet the workforce needs at any level called for by the economy. the individual level, and stay with the company for a longer period of time through that changing adaptation. Then they have to ask themselves how the composition of the shortages matches the remuneration levels.

I love that you’re asking companies, “What are you doing to invest in your current workers?” Sometimes we think too much about attracting workers and not enough about retaining them.

Customized training is often part of that solution. Can you talk a little bit more about that? That’s not something that’s very well known as one of the resources the system can provide.

Customized training and continuing education is one component of our overarching workforce development strategy.

In the customized training and continuing education arena, we had 37 institutions each doing their own work, and some of them doing a very, very good job meeting needs at the local level. But each institution left on its own could not meet the whole gamut of needs because there are only a finite number of curricular designs they could carry in their individual portfolios. So as part of our three-year effort to charting the future, we asked ourselves, collectively, “What if we pool all 37 portfolios and use that aggregated, integrated portfolio to meet the needs of businesses, no matter where they are located in the state?”

Let’s say there’s a business in Hibbing, 22

/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018

and Hibbing Community College does not have the capacity to deliver what they’re asking for. However, South Central in Mankato does have that capacity. What we can do is put together a collaboration between South Central and Hibbing College to make sure the Hibbing business gets what it needs. And so, it is in this regard, that we developed the regional model. We created governance structure and a strategic approach that can meet the needs of the whole region.

Suddenly the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Ultimately, the individual institutions deliver the work, but we make sure that the information flow is effective and that needs are met, no matter where the business is located.

It’s a really powerful opportunity for the private sector to connect.

Manufacturers in the private industry struggle with too many boundaries.

All of a sudden, those boundaries are shrinking away.

Exactly. The private sector could, in some ways, connect with just one person, no matter where they are. They’ll say, “I need this,” and within 24 hours we will match them to where those portfolios exist. So, those conversations can start occurring and the curricular designs can emerge to meet their needs.

It’s very clear to us that the need for customized training and workforce solutions in general is bound to rise.

And we want to make sure that we as a system have sufficiently augmented our capacity to meet those additional needs as they arise.

Has this structure already rolled out?

Last year was the first year. We are still putting the structure in place, but I think, hopefully in the next few months, that structure will be completed. When six entities are pooling their portfolios, there are a lot of different things which need to be worked out logistically and otherwise. I’m thrilled with the progress we are making, and I think it will be a game changer. It’s very clear to us that the need for customized training and workforce solutions in general is bound to rise. And we want to make sure that we as a system have sufficiently augmented our capacity to meet those additional needs as they arise.

But you talk about charting the future.

I probably should have asked the definition of charting the future right up front, because clearly you have a vision and a plan over the next, you said, three years, so explain it as you want. But what it really comes down to, it sounds like, is there’s a lot of work going on with visibility, to get the system more recognized across the state. Could you comment on some of that?

Given the impending worker shortages and the changing environment in which higher education operates, we knew that our future would be very different. Out of that came a strategic framework that said, “Providing extraordinary education at affordable cost to all Minnesotans.”

Then second was to be the partner of choice with businesses and the economy; and third, obviously, was to also adjust ourselves to the emerging budget realities.

We asked ourselves what we should do differently in order to get to that point. And that’s where charting the future came in. We used eight different teams to work eight different areas, including comprehensive workforce solutions, and gave credit for prior learning while also validating the learning that occurs in the workplace. Those eight groups came up with 42 recommendations. Then the colleges and universities came to the table, and we identified 21 that we will ramp up for work.

So, the future has been charted, but now we are in the midst of navigating the future, because the future is here.

And in that context, we focused on

three important areas over the last year, and they all have workforce implications.

One is student success in its holistic sense, which means not only graduating the student, but also making sure the student is appropriately placed in relevant employment. Another is diversity, equity and inclusion, because of changing demographics; and finally, financial and programmatic sustainability.

We are aligning to the changing needs of the learners, and the changing needs of the economy and workforce; we are aligning to changing demographics, and we are aligning to the new budget realities before us.

How does online training fit into this?

Actually, online training is also expanding quite a bit, especially in the last five to seven years. In fact, I think almost a quarter of our programs are online. Online today is very different than what online was even 10 years ago when we were still mimicking the old correspondence courses, just sending it digitally. Today, these classes have interactive chat rooms—interactive!

Students can talk to faculty all the time, and in some sense, there is more interaction in online classes than in face to face classes because the student is anonymous; so, they

are not intimidated by the sage on the stage.

My dream is that there is a student who works in St. Paul and lives in Minneapolis and every day takes the green line from downtown Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul. It takes 53 minutes. Many of our classes are 50-minute segments. Ken, using his earbuds and iPhone, can, interactively, take a class in real time, where he asks a question and interacts as if he was in the class. So, students can take a class while going to work, take a class while going back to work, and suddenly they have two classes under their belt. We have the technology today to do that. What we need is investment.

Let’s talk about budgets. How do declining budgets constrain the progress of some of the programs you’re talking about?

We cannot be overwhelmed by our budgetary stresses, as severe and challenging as they are. We will not be defined by our constraints, financial or otherwise. We will be defined by the innate potential and promise we deliver to the state of Minnesota.

It’s a difficult problem, but we are attacking it. A couple of things have happened.

Higher education has responded to 20

We have a whole gamut of curricular designs by which we promote and deliver education. And, in that regard, you’re right. We are the major player. years of disinvestments by increasing tuition, and this is happening nationally.

The cost structure itself of our deliveries hasn’t altered that much. To some extent we have become more efficient over time because we have had fewer resources.

But in our case, we don’t have the option of increasing tuition either, because most of our students—84,000 low-income students—come from economically fragile backgrounds. For them, $500 or a $1,000 will make or break whether they stay in the college or the university for that semester.

I’ll give you an example: When I was at Metropolitan State, we sent a letter to all the students who hadn’t come back in the last three semesters, who were in good academic standing and who were within 30 credits of finishing their degree. We sent FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

23

Photo by Lynn Shelton

them a plan by which they could graduate within a year and receive a $500 tuition scholarship.

That was a great ROI. For $500 I was putting one additional credentialed individual in the workforce.

Because of economic fragility and various other reasons, we are losing almost a third of our incoming class between their

Now, if our student success metrics go up, our enrollment will go up, and our revenues will go up.

In Minneapolis Community and Technical College, one out of every ten students, at some point during the course of his or her academic career, will be homeless. first and second year. Now, if our student success metrics go up, our enrollment will go up, and our revenues will go up. And so, our strategy to promote student success is not only a great strategy for the students and for the economy, it’s a great fiscal strategy for us. Right now, for example, in the seven universities in the Twin Cities, 24

/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018

we as a system capture only 30 percent of the students who want to go on from a two-year college to get a four-year degree: 14 percent go to Metropolitan State and 16 percent go to other universities. Let’s say we start capturing 50 percent. And these are students in our own institutions where we can capture them. Our persistence rate, from first to second year, goes up from instead of 70 percent moving into the second year, to, let’s say, 80 percent. Our fiscal problems are solved.

So, the internal dynamics of the institutions provide some hope. However, we need serious investments in order to create the shock absorbers, so we can keep these students in there. The students don’t necessarily leave because they are having difficulties in academics; they leave for a lot of other things. Just to give you one statistic, at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, one out of every ten students, at some point during the course of his or her academic career, will be homeless. They’re that close.

And so, therefore, there are elements of food insecurity, there are elements of homelessness. Life happens. Because most of them have a job and are raising a family, the average age of the student is higher.

So, initially we need certain additional investments, but then if those investments are being made by the state, we can move out of that.

Talk about investment. The Frandsen Family Foundation recently offered to cover tuition, fees, books and supplies for any student from Rush City High School who would attend Pine Tech. Could that be a model to energize manufacturers in certain regions to rally around?

Sure, in two ways. In one model somebody comes and says, “We will fund your tuition for the next two years if you go to a post-secondary institution.” The cost of receiving the education goes down dramatically and the benefit stays the same.

So, if at the individual level, the student is making a choice whether he or she should go or not, suddenly the cost/benefit ratio is much higher than otherwise would be the case, and there’s a greater incentive for him or her to go.

The second great example is workforce scholarships, and Pine has done a wonderful job there, too. The Legislature gave us $1 million aimed at four sectors of the economy that are in high demand, and manufacturing is one of them. So, we

The future has been charted, but now we are in the midst of navigating the future, because the future is here. created 400 scholarships of $2,500 each, about half the cost of tuition for the year.

Our presidents then went to their business partners and their high schools, and asked, “Would you match this?” Suddenly $2,500 became $3,500 or $4,500. We are closer to covering the whole tuition, and there is a greater chance the student will finish if he or she has that kind of support.

We hosted a parent focus group in Lakeville cosponsored by the local chamber. But the parent focus group was much more positive about the value of technical education than we anticipated.

We came away thinking that the bias toward the four-year degree path might be coming from teachers and guidance counselors. We still think we could do more to promote the great careers, not just jobs, available to people who get two-year technical degrees.

It takes a village to educate a student, and it takes a village to take care of the economy. We need a concerted effort. Labor force is not only a scale issue; it’s also a composition issue. There are skill shortages at all levels, and in fact, I can think of five, six areas of endeavor where a two-year degree creates a better income profile over a lifetime than a four-year degree. It’s a composition issue.

Peggy Kennedy, one of our former presidents, told me she was sitting in a plane next to a physician from the Fargo/Moorhead area. He came to know she was president of Minnesota State and said, “One of my sons went to your Moorhead campus and got a two-year degree.” Another son went to Vanderbilt. Guess who’s making the most money? The one who went to Moorhead.

There’s great work that occurs even with a four-year degree. We need skills at all levels. But I think what we need to do is create stronger partnerships with our K-12 institutions and create an information set and an educational program with industries that lays out the whole gamut of choices open to a student coming out of high school. I’m confident, if that happens, this mismatch issue will go away.

Today, I tell our presidents they not only lead their institutions, but they’re also leaders in their regions. They have to be at the table in shaping the economic, social and cultural agendas of their regions.

I notice you’ve brought on seven new presidents in just the past year. How has their role been evolving?

Changing circumstances will bring changes at the system level in terms of our focus and our approaches, but they will also bring changes at the internal, operational level. This new, changing environment requires different types of leadership traits.

Today, I tell our presidents they not only lead their institutions, but they’re also lead-

ers in their regions. They have to be at the table in shaping the economic, social and cultural agendas of their regions. We are not only stewards of the academic experience of our students, we’re also stewards of the communities from which we draw our students, and where our students go back and work. That kind of approach means they’re leaders at the system level or at the enterprise level, as well. What they need to do is manage this tension of individual autonomy and partnership with other institutions so that we can provide a much more augmented capacity to meet the needs of the down shortages Minnesota is going to face.

This kind of leader is somebody who is adept at developing strong partnerships with K-12 and other institutions within the system, with the broader, higher education at the national level, and with the businesses at the regional, state, and national level.

When I meet with new presidents and we talk about their stewardship of the communities and their role as leaders at the enterprise level, I tell them to always remember one thing. If we have to summarize

our rationale for our existence as a system and as institutions, it is simply to rid higher education of its elitist and insular character.

Reach out there. Learn. Remember, learning doesn’t only occur in classrooms. Learning is occurring all the time. Validate all learning, no matter where it occurs.

Enterprise Minnesota is part of a national system. We get to hear about the power of partnering with colleges and technical schools.

Approximately eight percent of our graduates are in manufacturing. There is a lot of emphasis on manufacturing, even in our four-year sector. Our universities also fully recognize that precision manufacturing is an important area in which they need to stay engaged—and that manufacturing today is very different than what manufacturing was 30 years ago.

We’re updating our laboratories all the time. Just to make the point, the integrated science and engineering laboratory at St. Cloud State University and the new lab at Minnesota State University–Mankato, have both been actively designed so that the industry researchers can come in there, too, and work jointly with our faculty on industry problems.

FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

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Interview

‘SOCIAL STYLE’

THE VALUE OF

T

he TRACOM Group is The Social Intelligence Company that uses SOCIAL STYLE®, Behavioral EQ®, Adaptive Mindset for Resiliency® and Adaptive Mindset for Agility® assessments and courses to help people create amazing relationships and build high-performing organizations.

TRACOM contends that most leaders recognize that their organization’s success is built on the capabilities of their people, but they often don’t understand how to maximize that potential in today’s fast-paced world. They invest in functional skills or generic leadership training without ever considering how to develop the full potential of each person. Social Intelligence is the realization of this true potential in individuals, teams and entire organizations.

TRACOM enhances organizational performance with interpersonal skills-based development solutions covering the core aspects of the individual: Behavioral Style, Emotional Intelligence and Mindset. By focusing on these three elements, they say, each person can learn to thrive in the workplace, even in the face of rapid technological shifts and organizational changes.

David, you are the author of the Social Style & Versatility Facilitator Handbook.

Why was this written and what led to the development of it?

Social Style and Versatility are critical

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/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018

Enterprise Minnesota’s Abbey Hellickson interviews renowned HR expert David Collins about how giving employees better leadership skills might just cause them to stick around, too.

and interlinked skills in today’s world.

When TRACOM first started, we focused on helping organizations identify top performers to hire or promote. Over time we discovered four patterns of behavior in people, and we named these patterns “Social Style.” All the research we’ve done shows that each one of those four Styles brings unique advantages and challenges when it comes to communicating and working with other people. People are far more predictable than most of us realize, and when we understand what others’ preferences are, we can adapt our behaviors and approach to meet their needs. The best part of all is that all four of the styles

can be effective in any role. It’s not your Social Style that matters; it’s how you use your Style that makes the difference.

The biggest indicator of people’s performance is a concept called Versatility, which can be described as how well people adjust or adapt their behavior to the preferences of those they work with.

In other words, how well they take the time and energy to approach another person in a way that he or she would like to be approached.

It was over 50 years ago that we discovered that people who demonstrated Versatility by adjusting their behavior to other people’s behavioral preferences were consistently ranked as the highest performers. Over time, we found that those skills were not necessarily innate in people, but they were trainable; we realized that we could absolutely change people’s lives by giving them skills to work better with people.

That’s really how we became a training and development company, and it was the genesis of how Social Style has become the most popular interpersonal effectiveness model in the world today. The book we wrote, the Social Style & Versatility Facilitator Handbook, is designed to pass along all of the knowledge and real world experience and insights we have gained to the thousands of Social Style instructors and facilitators all over the world.

David Collins is president and CEO at the TRACOM Group, a Denverbased company whose Social Style & Versatility Facilitator Handbook is used by Enterprise Minnesota’s consultants to help manufacturers improve workforce engagement. With more than 25 years in training and human resources experience, Collins has helped hundreds of organizations improve their performance.

His experience includes the creation and sales of training and development tools, recruitment and selection systems, e-learning platforms, custom training solutions, 360s and assessments, and complete learning management systems. Since 2003, David has managed the expansion of TRACOM’s product offerings including new courses and guides to apply Social Style. He has led sales efforts for packaged products and custom solutions, and has worked with fast-growing companies such as Learning Byte International and ePredix. He is a graduate of Syracuse University.

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What are your thoughts about using Social Style and Versatility as the foundation for leadership development?

Let me break that down in pieces. Social Style and Versatility are critical foundational skills for anybody in leadership. All of us have preferred ways to interact with others.

The best way for leaders to get the most out of the people they manage is to understand their preferred patterns and adjust how they communicate with them, how they assign tasks to them, how they coach them, how they delegate to them, and how they provide them with rewards and incentives.

By understanding Social Style, managers and leaders are able to change the very nature of the relationships they have with employees. We know through research and experience that very simple changes can have huge impacts in working with their teams.

How do organizations benefit when their leadership teams go through this process?

We measure how leaders and managers who are highly versatile—who adapt

their behavior to others—have much better engagement scores with the employees on their teams. In other words, they’re getting more out of their employees on an everyday basis. And we all know how important engagement is to getting people to perform at their best today and to get them to stay

Versatility allows individuals to identify the preferences of others and modify behavior to make others more comfortable based on each person’s unique Social Style. around so they’re here to help us tomorrow.

Research also shows that leaders who are high in Versatility are much better coaches; they’re rated as better conflict solvers and they’re also able to get the most out of their team. We see differences in performance

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anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent in a whole bunch of tasks in those areas.

How do you help people see the value of recognizing their own behaviors and the impact that it has on others?

As human beings, most of us are relatively blind to how other people see our behavior. So our training features a survey of behavior-based statements that allows people to assess their own behaviors as well as get input from others to provide their outside perspective. That gives us insights into how others view our behavioral patterns. Research tells us that more than 50 percent of people see their Social Style differently than how other people see it. That means we think we’re coming across to people in one way while, in reality, people are seeing us in an entirely different way.

This survey provides us with the gift of feedback. When you receive feedback from other people, you get to choose how you respond to it. You can either have a negative reaction, or you can slow down, reflect, and ask yourself: “That’s not what I expected. I wonder why that is and what that means?”

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That’s actually one of the most valuable parts of the learning that we can give to somebody. The resulting profile that people receive based on the survey has two parts to it: your Social Style and your Versatility, which is how effectively you adjust your Style to work with other people.

We find that over 70 percent of people see their Versatility differently than how other people see it. What’s interesting is that people who are naturally versatile tend to rate themselves lower on Versatility; people who tend to need a little bit more work tend to rate themselves higher. That sounds counterintuitive, but ultimately what you realize is somebody who thinks they are a little bit lower in Versatility is somebody who says, “I just had a really good conversation with my direct report, but if only I said this thing differently, if

We measure how leaders and managers who are highly versatile­—who adapt their behavior to others—have much better engagement scores with the employees on their team. In other words, they’re getting more out of their employees on an everyday basis. only I had provided this piece of information, if only I had gotten it done just a little bit faster, it would’ve been better for that other person I was working with.” These are the people that grade themselves a little harder and are always looking for ways to improve by adapting to others. And don’t forget the opposite may be true for someone that says, “Yeah, I am really good at this people stuff, so let’s get on to the next task at hand.” These people might grade themselves a bit higher, but the reality is that they may be missing important signals on how effective they really are in working with others.

How do you help overcome stereotypes of certain roles should have a specific style? For example, engineers think they should be analytical, or managers think they should have a driving style.

Abbey Hellickson is a business growth consultant who works with manufacturers throughout the state to help them engage their workforce, maximize productivity, improve company culture, and strengthen their leadership teams. Drawing on a wealth of experience in talent and leadership development, Abbey enables companies to drive performance at all levels of their organizations and develop the effective leaders they need to build and sustain profitable growth.

Prior to joining Enterprise Minnesota, Abbey served as the director of business and workforce education at Rochester Community and Technical College and as a corporate training instructor for Fastenal.

She received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Winona State University and a Master of Education in Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota.

FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

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The Definitive Guide to the World’s Most-Used Interpersonal Skills Model Casey M. Mulqueen, PhD

| David Collins

Enterprise Minnesota uses the Social Style & Versatility Facilitator Handbook as the single best source to learn how to improve relationships as well as efficiency and effectiveness in the workplace. The Social Style methodology was developed in the 1950s to help identify what distinguished successful individuals. Dr. David Merrill developed a statistically validated selection instrument that became the gold standard for recruiting and selecting managers, senior executives, and sales professionals in the workplace. Social Style has become the world’s leading Behavioral Style model. Thousands of organizations have used it to improve leadership performance and sales results. Sixty years later, the need for Social Style is greater than ever. The secret of Social Style lies within Versatility. Versatility allows individuals to identify the preferences of others and modify behavior to make others more comfortable based on each person’s unique Social Style. Having knowledge of your Social Style and the skills to enhance your Versatility allows you to build relationships, work collaboratively in diverse teams, develop coaching skills, increase leadership performance, and increase sales.

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We have never found any single Social Style to be the majority in a job function or any particular industry. For example, when most people think of an accountant they usually think an accountant should be analytical, but the reality is very different.

In fact, only 32 percent of accountants are analytical and what surprises people even more is that 29 percent of accountants are the Expressive Style, which is basically the exact opposite behavioral preference.

We teach people not to think about stereotypes, but rather to observe other people’s behavior to determine what their Social Style is. The facts I just shared highlight those stereotypes, pointing out assumptions that, quite frankly, just aren’t true. We need to focus on behavior and try not to make snap judgments about other people.

We find the most effective teams often are the ones that represent all four Social Styles: Driving, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical.

It is difficult for managers and leaders not to hire people just like them. Those are people they understand, and people that they will relate to very quickly. And when they hire people in their own likeness, they usually end up hiring people with the same Social Style. We find the most effective teams often are the ones that represent all four Social Styles: Driving, Expressive, Amiable and Analytical. This provides a balanced approach—someone to move the project along quickly, someone to make sure it’s being done accurately, someone to make it exciting, to keep everybody engaged, and someone to ensure everyone feels like they’re a part of the team.

Leaders should learn that it’s not only about identifying Social Styles and working with others, but making sure that you are utilizing the strengths of each one of those Styles on your team. And if you don’t have those people on your team, find ways to strengthen your weaknesses.

How do you help teams develop Versatility as a daily habit?

A beautiful thing about Social Style is it’s very easy to learn, easy to remember, and easy to apply. When you’re looking at

another person’s observable behaviors, it’s very simple to predict their Social Style and then start applying what you learned to just one or two people at a time. To make it easier, we provide a digital tool called the Social Style Estimator that enables you to identify someone’s Style by answering 14 simple questions. Once you know the other person’s Style, you can start to adapt to their behavioral preferences.

If a manager or leader is going to reward or recognize someone, it’s important to take Style into account. Some Styles enjoy public recognition and praise, while others may be embarrassed by that, preferring a quiet, more personal thanks. You want to provide the reward and recognition in the way the person prefers for it to have the maximum impact, and if you don’t deliver it that way, you could accidently have the opposite effect with that person. There are three things we suggest: One, figure out the style of the people that you’re working with. The next thing is to role-play an upcoming interaction.

And third, you’re going to find that after a couple of times, it’s going to become more

natural for you; and you’ll get a different reaction from the person.

The most fulfilling part of my role in working with companies is seeing the positive impact of Social Style and Versatility. What successes have you seen?

The impact of Social Style and Versatility has been career-altering for some people and absolutely life-changing for others. I personally get the most satisfaction when I can see somebody make the connection in the classroom that they can take back to his or her home life. I can see this when they say, “That’s why my kid does it that way,” or “I can’t believe it, that’s exactly the way my husband or my wife reacts.” When you can get somebody to see the benefit of why he or she would use this in his or her personal life, I can 100 percent guarantee that person uses it in his or her work life.

People contact us and say, “Such and such employee is a good employee, but they just can’t get along with their teams,” or they try to figure out ways to save this person. “We’re going to save that person so we can get them back to where it is that

they need to be.” It just has to do with how our behavior is being perceived. The gift of feedback really unlocks a lot of problems.

I’ve seen people go from being less than 30 days from being fired to becoming one of the most loved leaders inside their organization. And it has nothing to do with what their innate ability was or what kind of person they were.

It’s not uncommon for us to have people show up 15, 20, 25 years later and ask, “Now that I’m a manager, now that I’m a leader, how about training my teams?”

When I’m in those classes, those people share what a difference this particular skill made for them in their careers, and how that kind of made a big difference in their personal life.

If you think about it, the biggest separator of workplace performance for people or for individuals is really how well they can work with other people and how well they can relate to others. This is a skill that frankly we totally miss through that whole education process, that whole education system that we have that’s there. It really is one of those off-ramp skills.

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FALL 2018 ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA /

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Final Word

The Political Agenda Employees. Employees. Employees.

R

udy Perpich, Minnesota’s venerable governor in the ‘70s and ‘80s, once said that all his political campaigns revolved around three themes: Jobs. Jobs.

And Jobs. A lot of observers at the time thought his attitude reflected his Iron Range roots, a place where the then-collapsing mining economy separated a lot of his friends and neighbors from well-paying jobs and into long-term unemployment.

But other folks—me among them—understood his philosophy for its brilliant, non-partisan simplicity. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs united communities, policymakers and political organizations around a tangible and achievable goal. To some, a robust job market signified a healthy economy; job creators are profit-makers. To others, more and better jobs represented a universal elixir that remedied a wide variety of social and cultural ills. Those politicos used to say that the best family policy is a job, the best health care policy is a job, the best education policy is a job, and on and on.

“Jobs” will and should remain a frontline political issue in upcoming elections, but its underlying substructure will have to change dramatically. Let me use our annual State of Manufacturing® survey to tell you what I mean. Enterprise Minnesota annually retains a nationally prominent pollster to survey executives at small and mediumsized manufacturing companies across Minnesota about the most pressing challenges and opportunities in their industry. In most of the 10 years that we’ve conducted the poll, manufacturers sounded ever-louder alarms about how the unavailability of skilled workers was impeding their ability to grow profitability. But the results of our most recent survey show how the skills gap has devolved into a “warm body” gap.

And that problem is getting worse.

After politicians have finished celebrating how their policies have dramatically reduced the rates of unemployment, they will be faced with the reality (probably unacknowledged) that their policies had little 32

/ ENTERPRISE MINNESOTA FALL 2018

Lynn Shelton is vice president of marketing at Enterprise Minnesota.

to do with it. The rate of unemployment is being reduced by demographics, and it is far from a good thing. Baby Boomers are retiring and there are not enough young people to replace them in the workforce.

The end result of this could be disastrous.

RealTime Talent, a workforce organization that operates out of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, has predicted that the number of unfilled jobs in Minnesota could increase from 60,000 to maybe more than 200,000 by 2022. The result, they say, could erase $33 billion from the state’s GDP and cost individual citizens $12 billion in lost wages. And the state would lose more than $2 billion in tax revenues.

Trust me on this: The new spin on the Perpich political mantra must become Employees. Employees. Employees.

And if candidates are smart (and responsible), they will infuse their campaigns with

ideas that encompass issues that manufacturers have been telling us for a decade.

Such as: We need to rethink the future of work.

Public policies must embrace the fact that young people can launch lucrative, enriching, life-long careers without having to bear the crushing financial burden accompanying the receipt of a four-year diploma.

We need to rethink education. College should remain a hallowed American institution, but we need to dispel the notion among educators, guidance counselors and parents that a B.A. or a B.S. is the exclusive pathway to a successful, meaningful life. Does everyone need a four-year degree? (Ask your barista.) Policymakers should help elevate the cultural prestige of technical degrees and work with post-secondary educational institutions to ensure their curriculum correlates with what employers need.

And we need to rethink the workplace.

Artificial intelligence and robotics are not weapons in a diabolical effort by miserly manufacturers to cheat people out of jobs.

Their use will be increasingly essential to almost every manufacturing operation, large or small. One could argue, in fact, the companies that don’t deploy these technological developments are the ones cheating their employees, because they won’t be able to compete.

The economic future will be brightest in states whose policymakers understand the new reality is there will be more jobs than people to fill them. Very likely, a lot more jobs than people. Politicians, business executives and educators need to collaborate to ensure the remaining jobs will be more remunerative and satisfying than ever. What’s more, we need to inspire and educate young people to take over those positions. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs will always be an important cultural “elixir,” but responsible policymakers will need to transcend cheap political rhetoric and show substantive leadership now, not later.

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2100 Summer St. NE, Suite 150 • Minneapolis, MN 55413

You’re Invited Preparing for the Sale of Your Business & Retirement, Estate & Charitable Gift Planning If you’re a business owner with plans for retirement or selling your business, this program is tailored for you, as it will cover:

• • • • •

Transaction Planning: steps necessary to ready your business for a sale Private Equity & Investment Banking: buy-side vs. sell-side perspectives Asset vs. stock sale, seller notes, & installment sales Sophisticated legal solutions for exiting and succession planning Scenario Modeling: Understand how the structure of the deal intersects with asset allocation, investment & estate planning • Tax & Charitable Gift Planning The program will be led by our distinguished group of panelists:

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Maxwell J. Bremer - Principal, Corporate Transactions Group at Gray Plant Mooty Steven Beck - Managing Director at Hennepin Partners, LLC Paul J. Meyering - Senior Managing Director at Spell Capital Partners Bill Garrison - Executive Director, Consulting Group at Morgan Stanley James H. Lannan - Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley Chad R. Ellman - Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley Sheryl G. Morrison - Principal, Trust, Estate & Charitable Planning at Gray Plant Mooty

Date: Tuesday, October 23RD

Time:

Venue: Gray Plant Mooty

Reception: 5:30 - 6:30 PM

500 IDS Center - 5 Floor 80 S. 8TH St Minneapolis, MN 55402 Parking Validated: Marquette/IDS Ramp

3:00 - 5:30 PM

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Spouses, CFOs, and guests welcome RSVP

james.lannan@morganstanley.com or (952) 841-6454

Morgan Stanley | 8300 Norman Center Drive, #1150 Bloomington, MN 55437 The guest speaker(s) is neither an employee nor affiliated with Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Opinions expressed by the guest speaker(s) are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Morgan Stanley. (Add if applicable) Individuals should consult with their tax/legal advisors before making any tax/legal-related investment decisions as Morgan Stanley and its Financial Advisors do not provide tax/legal advice. © 2018 Investments and services offered through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Member SIPC.

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