State and Regional Roles in Getting Started

The State Role in Start-Up

As the state begins the early development of a state level sector strategy, it is critical to understand the importance of engaging system and state leadership, industry leaders, and various public partners. The state’s role in these early stages includes:

• Mapping and understanding your existing sector initiatives: Virtually every state has sector initiatives underway in its regions. Although the nature and sophistication of these initiatives will vary greatly, it is important to identify and understand the existing initiatives. They may be led by business associations, local workforce investment boards, community colleges, economic development agencies, or others. Mapping your existing sector initiatives will provide the base line data you need to identify successes and challenges, and build upon these initiatives to develop a comprehensive state level strategy. Minnesota has created a map that shows the location of the various sector related initiatives that have been developed with funds from one of their competitive grants or other resources (i.e. WIRED).
• Identifying individuals and/or organizations that would champion the development of a state sector strategy: Any new initiative or strategy can benefit from the support of “champions” – public or private sector leaders that are known and respected by their peers, and are willing to step out front to promote the strategy and bring others into the active partnership. The earlier in the development process this can happen, the more traction the strategy will have out the gate.
• Engaging leaders from successful regional sector initiatives: If there are one or two well developed regional sector initiatives already underway in your state, recruit a leader(s) from the initiative to help you develop your state level strategy. This will help you get the “buy-in” of the regions, and provide a valuable regional perspective from someone who has been doing the work.

The Regional Role in Start-Up

The roles of existing regional initiatives at this state start-up stage are to:

• Participate in the state mapping process
• Provide input to state leaders regarding how the state partnership can most effectively support regional initiatives
• Engage actively in the state strategy development process if recruited