At DEED, our agency’s mission is to empower the growth of the Minnesota economy, for everyone. Every year, our agency leadership creates goals – and metrics for success – that provide a roadmap for how we can best meet that mission. Today we’re sharing our 2022 goals with the public, so that you know what we’re focused on – and can hold us accountable.

This planning process is grounded in the Governor and Lt. Governor’s vision of One Minnesota, and is informed by the thousands of conversations DEED leaders and staff have with job seekers, business owners, industry leaders, labor representatives and many others across Minnesota every year. And as always, our work is guided by decisions made by your elected representatives at the state legislature.

The system we use to set goals and track progress is called OKRs, which stands for Objectives and Key Results. The Objectives describe our goals, and the Key Results are definable outcomes against which we measure our success on a 0-1 scale.

In 2022, our top goal is to drive an economic comeback from the COVID-19 pandemic, focused on people and businesses who face systemic barriers to growth.

To meet that top goal, every major division of DEED has set its own ambitious goals focused on making systemic changes to our work focused on equity. That’s because we know the kind of change this moment demands won’t happen if just one team is focused on more equitable outcomes – we all have to be rowing in the same direction.

We’ve brought in national and local leaders – from the McKnight Foundation, the NAACP, Ashoka, the YMCA, the Federal Reserve, and others – to share their experiences and thoughts on spearheading systemic change to eliminate racial and other disparities in society. These insights helped us further shape our planning process and set OKRs focused on reducing these disparities.

You can see each of our equity goals on a new hub we’ve launched to house DEED’s yearly planning documents and scorecards.

We also know our agency won’t achieve our mission unless we’re working collaboratively across our teams and with stakeholders on some of the biggest opportunities we have to build a more effective agency to spark growth. To that end, we’ve set goals on five big priority projects that involve multiple divisions working together as “One DEED” for Minnesota.

Those five priority projects are:

1. Build a new customer experience in our CareerForce system, rooted in a proactive approach to serve the customers that need us most.
2. Successfully implement all new economic recovery grant programs that come from the 2021-22 legislative sessions.
3. Land a dynamic new communications & marketing campaign to promote Minnesota’s economy to the country and the world.
4. Create more opportunity for job seekers and businesses by significantly strengthening the relationship between DEED’s workforce and economic development systems.
5. Build a positive internal culture that makes DEED an extraordinary place to work.

I invite you to take a deeper look at our goals, as well as view the goals we’ve set over the past three years, at a new hub we’ve launched to house all of DEED’s goals & outcomes.  As always, we welcome your feedback.