Maher & Maher was formed in 1987, but it wasn’t until the early 1990s that the New Jersey-based human resource consulting firm first plunged into the realm of workforce development and large-scale regional projects.
Since then, Maher & Maher has helped practitioners in every corner of the US — and several other countries — set up strategic plans, training assessments, social network maps, and the like. And along the way, the firm started partnering with EMSI to bring data and economic analysis to its projects.
We recently spoke with Rick Maher, President of Maher & Maher, about the key issues regarding regionalism, getting people invested in long-term planning, and much more.
For more on the work EMSI and Maher & Maher have done, see this case study on the first-ever Regional Innovation Grant, in Newton, Iowa.
EMSI: So how did Maher & Maher start, and how did you become consultants in the workforce development world?
Rick Maher: We really didn’t set out 23 years ago with an eye on economic and workforce development; it was the opposite. We were originally in the private sector. We did most of our early work in the communications industry. In the early years, our biggest project was probably the first-ever deployment of cable modem services in the United States. We deployed high-speed data for Time Warner Cable and what is now called the Road Runner service. We outsourced the deployment of Road Runner nationwide, including the creation of a change management strategy, a training certification system, a first-ever deployment of an eLearning platform that became Road Runner University.
From policy to practitioner, we’ve kind of been there from the beginning, because as I’ve explained to people all along, regionalism is really the mother of all change management initiatives. You’re really trying to get workforce, education, private sector, economic development, philanthropy all aligned and shooting at the same target.
Our history has been: We get called on when there’s some large-scale change or transformation [requested] by a leader, and they’re looking for some guidance or assistance to help navigate cultural resistance and bring people into alignment on a common goal. In the case of Time Warner, it was moving from a video business to a high-speed data service. Once we did, of course, we launched Voice over IP in cable and video on demand and all kinds of advanced broadband products.
We saw that, 15 to 18 years ago, we were very dependent on [the communications] sector and were looking to branch out. We got into the government services side, and our history in government is predominantly in workforce development.
We’re contractors to many states and the federal Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. And we were called in to consult at the initiation of the regionalism message out of the Department of Labor — what was then known as the WIRED initiative. So again, we had a large-scale transformational vision and we were called on to help support the dissemination and the communication of the new policy direction to the workforce system nationally.
For that matter, we were also part of a program called Innovate ETA — we were consulting to transform the way ETA did business around this new policy direction. So we were there at the formation of regionalism and have been involved in WIRED regions, we were involved in the first RIG region, and important regions around the country.
From policy to practitioner, we’ve kind of been there from the beginning, because as I’ve explained to people all along, regionalism is really the mother of all change management initiatives. You’re really trying to get workforce, education, private sector, economic development, philanthropy all aligned and shooting at the same target. And it’s hard enough to align a corporation around a common vision, but in this case you’re trying to align multiple states, counties, regions around a common vision. It is in fact a big change management initiative. That’s why we like playing in this sandbox — we think it’s a real challenging and important area of our practice.
EMSI: That seemed to all come together in the first RIG grant — the Newton, Iowa, project.
Maher: That’s where I met EMSI and that might have been the first project we brought EMSI in. Since that time, we’ve introduced EMSI to the Labor Department in Washington and their regions. And we have engaged with EMSI steadfastly as a part, I think, of all our regional projects, again because we’re not economic development professionals. I want to stress: We never claimed to be, and we don’t think regionalism calls for that per se. It’s a change management initiative, and we are workforce development professionals and that gives us a sense of the lay of the land and a knowledge of the language. But we’re not trying to be something we’re not, so we bring in other people to add to our professional mix. But ultimately, what we’re bringing is not a plan, it’s a process to create their own plan. EMSI is kind of our economic development security blanket; they’re our data experts. And we’ve brought them into every project since then.
EMSI: You spoke about starting out in the communication field and working on what is Road Runner now. What were the challenges of moving from that to government services and the workforce development side? Were there a lot of similarities, or were there some pretty hefty challenges along the way?
Maher: That’s a great question. I remember when I was seeking counsel of what sector to add, I had a friend who was very much involved in New Jersey. He was a legislator in New Jersey, and he suggested government. I remember saying to him, ‘I’m not sure government is progressive enough for this.’ He said, ‘You know, I’m not sure you’re right. There’s a lot of change going on there, and the government is trying to get more into technology and trying to get leaner and meaner and more progressive. So I would say the challenge was actually less problematic than I thought it was going to be.
… From the beginning it really has been a strong partnership with EMSI. And it’s meant that we could really focus on our area of strength, which is the process and change management tactics, and let the data part — the stuff that we were not that strong on — be the purview of somebody who is strong, and that’s been EMSI. So it’s been a strong partnership; we’re very pleased with it.
I’ve got to tell you that we have been struck by the similarity between what we do in the private sector and government. There are nuances and there are differences, and you have to be a lot more savvy of how you approach change in the government sectors. … But overall, the common denominator is people. In either the private or public sector, people have fears which tend to pull them away from tackling the big issues they need to tackle. But they also, we find, have a common theme, which is all kind of related to these folks wanting things to get better for their children and grandchildren. And in the world we’re living today, if we can get it down to that common denominator, focus on the customer and make people self-reflect and realize that the way we’ve always done things is not going to have the same effect on their children and grandchildren and we let them understand the generational challenge that we’re dealing with right now. We are at a time where history is being written right now. Thirty or 40 years from now, people’s kids and grandchildren are going to be reading about whether or not people met the challenge to deal with the global economy.
I have a great quote that I use with people. Believe it or not, it’s from the Grateful Dead: ‘Somebody has got to do something, and it’s incredibly pathetic that it’s got to be us.’ And I use that with groups, and people get that. They get that it’s not like another time, 10 or 15 years ago. This is a transformational era, and leaders that are willing to do different things — to break things and put them back together in a way that the global economy challenges us to do — they’re the ones that are going to make a difference for the next generation. And frankly, whether it’s private sector or public sector, if you can get that common denominator, people react pretty much the same. People are people. We think we’ve been informed by what we’ve learned in the private sector, and we think we bring that talent to government. A lot of people expected government to be so much more stodgy. There are challenges, but no. I think ultimately it’s about finding the right formula to move people to a different future, whether it’s public or private.
EMSI: You talked about bringing together all these stakeholders. It’s probably hard to boil it down to one key, but would you say collaboration and building strong partnerships is the biggest key? Or is it something else?
Maher: I agree, [but] I have a different way of putting it. I don’t believe in stakeholdership. We tell people very candidly we don’t want stakeholders — we want stockholders. We want people to bring their minds, their hearts, their passion, their talent, their knowledge, and I tell them: ‘Don’t forget your wallet because we want you to be invested at the level of equity ownership in this plan. There’s nothing short of that that’s going to make the transformation happen for the future of this community.’
Our process is really driven by work teams, not by us. We may deliver the report in a technical manner, but we don’t author it. It involves a lot of skin in the game from our clients. It’s a lot of work, but ultimately one of the things we leave behind, the plan is just one of the deliverables that they get at the end. The most significant deliverable is an aligned group of stockholders that have an equity interest in the future and are invested in the plan. So, yes, I think do think it’s collaboration, but I put it a lot more strongly than that because it’s important from the first meeting for people to understand that what we bring to the table is a process. And at the end of the day, the plan is one of things they get, but in a way it’s the least significant thing. The most significant thing is a set of stockholders who are invested in a transformational vision for the future.
EMSI: How much of your time is helping these stockholders as you say buy into this vision and make sure they’re really invested? Or is that something you just to let happen organically, and if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen?
Maher: No, in fact we spend significant amounts of time on it, and that is the development of the change management role that we play. First off, we did the first-ever social network map in any RIG or WIRED region [in Newton, Iowa]. And we have advanced that technology so that we do network maps at the front end of an assignment. And it shows the level of engagement from varieties of community members, so if we’re invested in a network and K-12 isn’t represented, or if one or three people have all the relationships and otherwise people aren’t very well-connected, the map empirically quantifies that and shows it. And we can look at the health, if you will, of the social network. And we can set goals to recruit and better connect individuals one to another and organizations one to another. Then we’ll map again three months, six months out and they can empirically watch their network grow. It really focuses people on the strength of this spider web-looking network that effectively reflects the nature and strength of their partnerships.
We are increasingly using something called scenario-based planning to enhance strategic planning. And essentially what we have the group do is define the drivers of their economic future. It could be, if it’s an agricultural environment, anything from rainfall, it could be federal policies, it could be the price of oil that may impact the future of these regions. We ask people to define those drivers, then rank them on a level of importance and levels of uncertainty. And when they do that, they can start to sense the different kinds of possible futures. It can look a lot like the status quo as an example, which is nothing, or one that might bring them into green technology or agriculture or energy or healthcare — or some other area of strength. And of course data that EMSI brings to the tables is blended into their assessment of these drivers.
We’re helping people understand that the way they make decisions is going to make a difference to the next generation. And for scenario planning, they analyze these various scenarios — five, 10, 20 years out into the future based on these drivers — and they pick the version of the future they want for the children and grandchildren. And that helps create this transformational vision that everyone aligns around. So through the learning initiative (the learning game), through social network mapping, and through scenario-based planning, we’re intentionally putting tactics into this process that drive this strong network that I’ve been speaking about. And really I think it’s the most important element in the process.
EMSI: We’ve mentioned the Newton, Iowa, project. Any other strong success stories that have implemented the scenario-based planning or the other elements you’ve talked about?
Maher: Well, I can tell you we’ve worked in regions throughout the country now … and several regions in Puerto Rico even. One of our WIRED regions in Southwest Connecticut was deemed a model regional plan from the Department of Labor. We’ve just completed a plan in New Jersey for nursing educators, where we’ve GIS mapped nursing education capacity to demand and you can go in and sort educational attainment. It’s essentially the educational pipeline on a GIS map. The asset map has been converted to GIS mapping here in New Jersey. We’re now working in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in response to a defense shutdown. [We’re doing] a regional plan for 12 counties, I believe. The Midwest Iowa region, which is in the midst of their plan, just landed an electric car company [EnVision Motor Company] that just went public.
So there’s a number of [success stories]. From the time the policy was formed to the present day, we’ve moved the formation of regionalism as a policy to I don’t know how many now regional projects. And we’ve added depth and dimensions to our process along the way. We think we’re always learning with our clients, but we’re getting to the point where we have a really integrated, kind of a smooth-oiled machine, I think, in working on regional economies.
And again, from the beginning it really has been a strong partnership with EMSI. And it’s meant that we could really focus on our area of strength, which is the process and change management tactics, and let the data part — the stuff that we were not that strong on — be the purview of somebody who is strong, and that’s been EMSI. So it’s been a strong partnership; we’re very pleased with it.
EMSI: I would be remiss not to ask about the O*NET Academy. I know Maher & Maher was the designer of it. As far a model of eLearning and rolling this out nationally for workforce development professionals and others to use, can you talk about how successful that’s been in your mind?
Maher: Well, we have been with O*NET for … I can’t remember how long. It’s got to be over 10 years. We were initially called in to work with the O*NET Consortium when it was first deployed. Of course, O*NET was the replacement for the Dictionary of Occupation Titles. And the Dictionary of Occupational Titles had existed since after World War II. It was a book. O*NET was to be a much-more technology-based replacement for a series of codes, and it was not just a job code, but really a common language for workforce development. The O*NET Content Model, its database, is descriptive KSAs — knowledge, skills, and abilities — for most of the occupations in the US economy. It was a big and important change, but we had a country of stakeholders that were used to DOTs [Dictionary of Occupational Titles], and they were not changing. It was very difficult in the early days.
So from the beginning, our job was to communicate all that in a way that would get people to accept and use it and understand why they should go through the pain of getting rid of something they were more familiar with for 50 years and going to something new. We originally did that in classroom training we deployed in all 50 states. We were making enough progress, but literally the government didn’t have the money to continue that and we created O*NET Academy as the first-ever of its kind online learning platform to try to advance the adoption of O*NET. And in fact O*NET Academy pioneered webinars. Everybody now uses webinars; no one had heard of one when we launched them 10-plus years ago for O*NET.
O*NET Academy today … has done a great job of building that sense of community around O*NET practitioners. First we got people in call centers and workforce offices to change and use O*NET codes, but then more importantly recently, we’ve got the value-added practitioners like EMSI to take up the use of computer applications. And that’s really cemented O*NET’s standing in the workforce system and really in the global economy now.
We’re really very proud of our affiliation with O*NET. And again, we came at a time when its future was absolutely not certain. And if we couldn’t get people to adopt it, it may have fizzled. But it’s been a longstanding, really successful relationship.
For more information about Maher & Maher, visit its website.
