Stronger by Design

A talent pipeline is a series of education, training, and employment steps or transitions that, together, form a continuous path from early education and training to advanced or senior employment in a professional field. The talent pipeline concept provides a visual and accessible way to think about the many steps that often occur as an individual advances toward a senior position in a given field. This toolkit is intended to help readers understand how to improve their talent pipelines using design thinking. The authors treat managing talent pipelines as a design issue and explain the key steps for understanding pipelines and developing plans to improve them.

Pipelines require collaboration and partnerships to make impactful changes. Therefore, this toolkit focuses on state governments and their partners as key decisionmakers and actors in shaping education and training and workforce opportunities. However, this toolkit can be used by anyone interested in collaborating to improve a talent pipeline. Importantly, it provides strategies and practices to bring together stakeholders from different sectors to begin the work of talent pipeline management and improvement from a design thinking perspective.