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What is your Strategic Big Idea, Wild Thing?

Sadly, due to the multitude past examples of Strategic Failure — with plenty of that leadership failure being centered in the United States of America — it is not surprising that Risk Management is growing into a multibillion-dollar professional services sector. The StratGen SI 2 approach to General Strategy and Leadership (GSL) includes the leadership development platform — being the SI 2 Lab: the first Human Ecosystem — where searching for the X Factor Wild insights and treatments to our otherwise expanding municipal risk portfolios is the accepted norm.

Because… shouldn’t doing public good by unearthing better ways to coexist with our fellow humans and our necessary natural resource requirements be what’s normal? The Sustainable Liberal Democracy GSL we need now is no doubt one example of the next level of thinking Albert Einstein referenced:

“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.”

— Albert Einstein

Since the number of people on the planet referring to the basics of entrepreneurship as being the human, structural, and social capital pillars of Intellectual Capital… we are now free to be a bit like Einstein about Municipal Success and at least switch up the “What market problem are we solving?” prompt some believe leads to a lot of local small business creation. StratGen supports entrepreneurial activity; but Municipal Success Criteria is on environmental, economic, societal, and governance planes… in synergy.

Because thinking of our municipalities as markets is at least an intellectual conclusion that is not ground-breaking. Delivering on all the promises and possibilities of ethical and empathetic form of GSL leading to Sustainability Oriented Liberal Democracy (SOLD) solutions — one at a time; and then much more — at this point will be seen as genius.

And then towards the dawn of the 22nd Century, SOLD will be seen as the norm. It’s important to develop the GSL practices today that help those in the future understand why to not take the future we launch here and in the now for granted. Because changing minds here and now is no joke and not for the weak-kneed.

All this effort and intellectual freedom towards establishing resilience and then sustainability right where we all live — in Our Municipalities — needs to be called something else besides Sustainable Liberal Democracy Centered General Strategy and Leadership. So, StratGen revised the past concept of Strategic Innovation — and the natural connection of classic Strategic Innovation, that generates outcomes like AI (Artificial Intelligence), with Intellectual Capital — in the form of SI 2 (I.e.; nearly anything the StratGen client and their stakeholders wish to invest in) and the StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 Platform.

Imagination, Creativity, and as much Genius as possible are where to work through our Issues, Challenges, Solutions (real and merely imagined), and Outcomes (ICSOs). It is a constant the there will be someone or several parties pressing for immediate solutions with no time for imagination and creativity. Genius is about results and innovation deliverables. So, more is more versus less is more when it comes to GSL and the fuel of Imagination, Creativity, and ethical, empathic Genius.

And if you are wondering something along the lines of, “Well, there should be a free PDF download titled something like the StratGen Municipal Success Guidebook that summarizes all this”… that is okay. All of us who want to share educational products and develop services along these lines just need to join the SI 2 Lab. When we work together forming SLD; we’ve stepped into a larger world.

While StratGen uses metaphors and analogies to support creative heuristics that often feature male figures; the Amy Adams character of Dr. Louise Banks from the film Arrival is a key one in delving into generating outcomes from X Factor Wild spaces.

SI 2 and The Strategy Innovators

American Pluralism.

Out of Many; One [E pluribus unum]. It’s a simple and powerful condensed strategy statement connected to the Preamble to the US Constitution; both forming our Union Mission.

Instead of wondering if it is okay to marry sustainability with principles of liberal democracy [Sustainable Liberal Democracy], and whose territory that version of Strategic Innovation 2.0 (SI 2) steps on, a Strategy Innovator inducing Municipal Success nationwide will find The Way to deliver those dependent outcomes.

Right now no one can imagine Sustainable Liberal Democracy (SLD) being okay and working out. What will people think of SLD? What will the donors and staff at The Heritage Foundation think?

Yes, we can still be idealistic, diplomatic, and pragmatic. Together as Strategy Innovators.

StratGen helps to mitigate and treat risk by developing Strategy Innovators who are already establishing resilience and then sustainability right where we all live: in Our Municipalities. With StratGen SI 2 tools and the SI 2 Lab space forming part of the Structural Capital aspect of SI 2 Dynamism; these Strategy Innovators self-identifying in a new, powerful fashion and as a Human Ecosystem allow for more of the Sustainable Liberal Democracy solutions to our otherwise expanding municipal risk portfolios.

Jimi Hendrix as Strategy Innovator

Before The Jimi Hendrix Experience happened, Jimi Hendrix created the tools and the space to “…wander into the wild fearlessly”. The tragedy of Hendrix is that while unlike Van Gough and other artists and innovators who do not see the fruits of their labors while living; Hendrix was wildly successful in life and could have tamed destructive aspects of his version of X Factor Wild and ended up sharing with us today.

When The Jimi Hendrix Experience played on June 18, 1967 the face of Rock and Roll transformed from Elvis, the Beatles, and The Beach Boys… to something X Factor Wild. The Who played just before The Grateful Dead. Pete Townsend had destroyed his guitar and Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit. The audience didn’t riot then or when Hendrix played. But Rock and Roll had a new standard of both creativity and innovation from then on.

Some in the audience were forced to reflect on the Hendrix set with a new metaphor: “space music”. There are several reasons we can’t be like Hendrix. We want people to live past age 27 for one reason.

Right now a vest of Hendrix is on display at the Smithsonian Museum of History and Culture. But of course we are living in the midst of an unsought counterculture revolution seen in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Whether this language can be attributed to Michelangelo with precision or he was better at describing his work to patrons than Leonardo di Vinci as to liberating ideal form from general content; the work of Hendrix came from the millions of decisions about what to keep and what to chip away:

“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”

— Michelangelo

“When in the Course of human events […]” are the first words of the US Declaration of Independence. The course of those events rates a fresh interface: Sustainable Liberal Democracy (SLD). As we head towards the nation’s tricentennial, a hybridization of sustainability and liberal democracy gives attention, renewed energy, and a unifying movement — or dynamism — to what can often seem like lost causes on both fronts. SLD is defined by our environmental, economic, societal, and governance (EESG) Municipal Success Critical Factors. Our states and national strategic environment reflects Municipal Success or Municipal Failure. Every day we launch from a position somewhere in the middle of perfect success or total failure. We are at the leading edge of a Strategic Innovation Frontier every day as to defining these challenges of data, information, knowledge, understanding, and wisdom (DIKUW) as leaders and then Strategy Innovators.

StratGen simply provides part of the formula and forum as we cope, coordinate, and maneuver to establishing resilience and then SLD… right where we live: in Our Municipalities.

StratGen develops Strategy Innovators who forge an X Factor Wild dynamic in the midst of otherwise predictable events and inevitable outcomes deriving from all directions otherwise. Disruptive is a word with a lot of negative connotations and is not necessarily about the high road to SLD.

Each day is an Opportunity Departure Point to shift the direction of those events; and that strategic environment is highly competitive. Strategy is not just a corporate or military domain. Clinical reasoning and diagnosis in healthcare is one ‘human flourishing’ metaphor for strategy work that can help us switch to a X Factor Wild approach to getting out from under the boot of what should be obsolete and clearly Anti-Sustainability approaches to strategy that generate untold harms… and being specific about those harms and designing antidotes is part of Strategic Innovation 2.0 and being Strategy Innovators.

If we pause and think about why an improved strategic environment is not unfolding right where we all live — in Our Municipalities— then we are at least doing strategy work as why is it this way and not Plan B? Strategy is The Way.

The economy is about valuable products and services that form the Meta Gestalt of the economy. The transcendent value level of ecological and therefore human flourishing these days is where hope and happiness reside. Interfacing with strategy, innovation, and risk in a new way is how we establish resilience and then sustainability… right where we live: in Our Municipalities. Instead of the synthetic reality of services like unregulated Artificial Intelligence (AI); StratGen is one part of the formula and forum to refocus upon and redefine the reality of more hopeful and happier examples of Municipal Success.

The following poem is an example of metaphor momentarily replacing our Municipal Success environmental, economic, societal, and governance (EESG) Critical Factors. The list of challenges to our Municipal Success is not currently being tamed. It’s growing.

Information itself is getting riskier as to reliability; so we can add new resilient techniques like possibly referring to the new UN Information Integrity Principles. Obviously a version for a TBD Information Integrity in General Governance Guidebook is needed as our own Federal government has become a self-fulfilling prophecy of spuriousness.

StratGen fosters such new EESG Municipal Success products and services. But mainly SI 2 Dynamism and the SI 2 Lab are about Leadership Development. StratGen develops Strategy Innovators. And metaphor and analogy are useful in developing strategy in unfamiliar territory; when the obsolete map is not the terrain.

We need leaders who can tap into their personal, unique version of X Factor Wild empathetic, ethical genius. Then with a new map for interfacing with strategy, innovation, and risk — especially as to examples of downside X Factor Wild like Project 2025 and DOGE; and of course what has been referred to as climate change — Strategy Innovators tap into imagination as much as the information minefield out there.

Most of all we become a society of practitioners in a new way and discipline as to coping, coordinating, and maneuver in this era of strategic challenges to Municipal Success.

X Factor Wild can be good or bad; or in the middle. Obsolescence is part what can die. When one wild innovation from the past becomes obsolete; another new one can be born. StratGen helps develop the Strategy Innovators that help make what we don’t need obsolete and create the X Factor Future we need.

I never saw a wild thing 
sorry for itself. 
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Self-Pity by D.H. Lawrence

Strategy is the art and science of formulating, achieving, and maintaining aims. The strategic planning sessions and retreats your college, university, and municipal government leaders go through every year probably lack dynamism connected to a vision of Sustainable American Liberal Democracy.

And they have no mental and operational model like this one:

One reason to think of the above words of D.H. Lawrence is… keep your more inspiring ideas, music, readings… and allies… close by. Self-Pity is pretty stark. But it’s a metaphor for the hard ‘diamond-cutting’ nature of strategy.

Newly mined then cut diamonds became less marketable due to sustainability principles; and sustainability includes human rights. Natural state diamonds are interesting; but faceted diamonds are anthropogenic and whether synthetic or natural then faceted; anthropogenic diamonds are alluring for many.

The D.H. Lawrence poem mentions the word wild. Along with beauty and vital requirements nature provides us at an irreplaceable value prior to any human rendering; we can think of our human potential as essentially wild too; above and beyond any negative connotations and definitions of what can be wild:

Wild also means excellent, special, or unusual:

The music they play is just wild.

Your wildest dreams are your hopes or thoughts about the best things that could happen in your future… or for the sake of family, community, nation, and planet.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d win.

— Cambridge Dictionary

Wild Women and Men, The Age of Enlightenment is still relevant and about what is unorthodox. Our American Way of Life is about Rule of Law; but also about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A paradox is that we can be wild about dealing with strategy, innovation, and risk. We dream and then we do.

Strategy is far better to do than to have done to us.

In Aikido the hanmi stance is metaphorical to the strength of a triangle. The triangle in Aikido is a focus mode of the moment and energy at hand becoming Mission and the Future; combined with the circle and square Aikido elements like technique and space.

Like art and Aikido we can add form to the content of EESG Municipal Success Critical Success Factors. The Gestalt when the formula and forum of the SI 2 Dynamism repertoire is introduced may make all the difference in rendering new value from what is presently wild in the strategy, innovation, and risk space; and establishing a stance of resilience and then sustainability.

Like the resolution of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, or any great story with a happy ending; we evolve. But there’s some tension and conflict to resolve. Writing our Municipal Success Stories as members of a Sustainable Liberal Democracy means writing the first lines of how our character applies strategy in each challenge context: fearlessly, imaginatively, and without self-pity.

Let’s save ourselves a lot of turmoil and wasted energy and do Municipal Success for Sustainable Liberal Democracy together… as Strategy Innovators. Just join the SI 2 Lab: It’s where the Wild Things and Strategy Innovators meet.

Rather than strictly working with corporations, StratGen offers parts of the forum and formula for developing Strategy Innovators. Like Strategic Aikido, the SI 2 Dynamism spaces and tools start with basics of General Strategy and Leadership (GLS).

Aikido involves some aikidōka (practitioner) prerequisites; but Aikido expertise is not among them Day One.

Imagine our world of challenges as a series of Opportunity Departure Points at the leading edge of the Strategic Innovation Frontier. But instead of facing those challenges with panic and uncertainty as most are; we are developing a ‘strategy martial arts’ that is as innovative as Aikido was in contrast to Japanese Budo (connects to Samurai) culture in the early part of the 20th Century. We can protect ourselves; others; and our inescapable EcoHuman synergy with these new practices that depart from but relate to Past Inertia. The Present Push and Future Pull are all around us. But we are one with a new Kiai; or inner / outer harmonic force that establishes control and mediation in chaotic times. Probably like the Jedi in Star Wars; as George Lucas synthesized the Star Wars backstory from multitude cultures and metaphors. We need a layer of imagination as we delve into some super serious strategic environment issues these days.

This Day One of the GLS basics within the StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 (SI 2) Platform. Kiai!

Visioning with hope connected to our empathetic and ethical values works out better with strategy. Strategy and what is strategic — the strategic space being what aids or is relevant to strategy — is hard because it is about decisions and commitment around focusing our Intellectual Capital — and Intellectual Capital beyond corporate valuation— into actions for Sustainable Value Creation. But Sustainable Value Creation is necessary for human thriving, our natural resource requirements; and then Municipal Success. So, let’s work hard… but together… and as Strategy Innovators.

The term Municipal Success sounds like something for Urban Planners. But feel free to look over the American Planning Association or Main Street America websites and see if Urban Planning really encompasses our modern local challenges. And agreed, Urban Planners can discuss Municipal Success and also become Strategy Innovators.

We know that economics is of interest to many Americans with the price of eggs and other affordability issues. Municipal Success boils down to establishing resilience and then sustainability. Unsustainable America is not affordable and there is little resilience available as we head toward National Strategic Failure.

One of the many different definitions of strategy is just a way of doing something. Strategy is about idea generation. It is about tapping into creativity to deal with a challenge. So, any US citizen should have an exposure to strategy in K-12 as part of life skills and career preparation. In college or university, whatever degree is pursued, writing a strategy statement about how that career will lay out… conceptually as plans change in the face of reality… should be a pre-graduation workshop with the career center. The actual academic work, especially internships and research, have applications for strategy. StratGen in no small part is about giving students and education systems an edge by introducing this threshold concept of strategy. It is not just for MBAs; and apparently it is widely varied in business courses how strategy is taught.

Whether you are in your your senior year of high school and just turned 18, or that point in life was a few decades ago for you, joining the SI 2 Lab and becoming a Strategy Innovator in some ways is about continuing your education — but always applied to our Municipal Critical Success Factors.

Let’s maneuver to Municipal Success… together as Strategy Innovators

A strategy-related PDF or slide deck created last year can inform what we do today to respond… versus react… to Strategic Shocks. Strategic Shocks can be anything from extreme weather events… to more extreme and unethical political and business leaders. Whatever the strategic downsides Americans are facing; right where we all live — in Our Municipalities — today it is all coming at a generally faster and more overwhelming tempo.

One StratGen workshop tool is mapping a Doom Loop; and then the relieving Strategy Engine. Let’s maneuver to Municipal Success… together as Strategy Innovators.

We are behind on Municipal Success. But strategy is The Way; and more American leaders — from those age 18 and up — can now become Strategy Innovators and start getting an edge at winning the X Factor Future… with an empathetic and ethical genius.

Municipal Success is the new competition space. It is not the ‘fun side’ of strategy to look at all the ways American Homeland is not secure. Strategy is about hard choices forming our way to win. What is strategic is not always a big fun factor; so we want to at least do that hard work with an empathetic and ethical mindset. Strategy is The Way… together as Strategy Innovators.

Municipal Success is actively shaping versus delaying — or willingly being mislead about — today’s strategy, innovation, and risk environment

Emotionally it is always a lot to handle these days as to looking at anything like quality journalism; strategic reports; and what those existing empathetic and ethical leaders in any sector are trying to tell us about our environmental, economic, societal, and governance issues. The good news is practices like Strategic Foresight are about winning the X Factor Future. This leadership space to is about maneuver between the past, right now, and a contested future. And a business plan, other strategic plans, and strategic reports and other Strategic Communication efforts can take place.

More likely than not, the Critical Success Factor(s) Assessment and decisions about our municipal challenges is what’s next… every day for the foreseeable future. Trying to ‘get ahead’ on what most people describe as ‘climate change’ is one Doom Loop right now. Thinking strictly about ‘100% Renewables Only’ is actually Strategic Thinking from a place obsolescence at this point. And even more obvious, human activity has already radically altered the climate; therefore increasing extreme weather events compared to 1990. And there will be a cost to solutions like Deep Energy Conservation.

We need more multidomain thinking Strategy Innovators; and right away.

Strategy is your way of taking care of crucial challenges as an emerging or current leader in any discipline. Strategy is our way of Actually Making America Great… finally. A Sustainable America Engine that links sustainability-oriented leaders from across the nation is a way of actually aiding that greatness versus just worrying about what bad thing happens next.

If you want to have more power over a leadership experience today that establishes resilience and then sustainability — starting right where we live: in Our Municipalities — join the SI 2 Lab. Let’s be Strategy Innovators: together.

Building a Central Strategy Statement for a business, nonprofit, or government unit with The Way of dependent vision, mission, purpose, values, principles, and a description of Social Synergy — Social Synergy meaning what happens if People Power actually gets serviced with an empathetic genius ethic — means a great story that creates, spreads, accelerates, and intercepts at the inflection points of resilience and sustainability challenges: at a pace and manner of our choice. Operational and funding issues needs that story and central logic first. That’s empathetic and ethical power.

A Dependent Strategy Statement with Action Plan follows. Of course Action Plan can mean more detailed program and/or project management plans as to those implementation / execution levels of strategic management. Financing is often something leaders like to know more about these days. First, StratGen helps leaders with the Strategic Big Idea they and their stakeholders really need to elucidate in contrast to where we all where at even just a year ago.

Strategy is about creating desirable change. Often by hammering bottlenecks of undesirable news.

Municipal governments use sophisticated strategic management software today. We don’t know how well our small businesses and nonprofits — which include hospitals and schools — work with Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management. But we can all learn what Municipal Success needs to start looking like.

One of the central mindsets for generating ideas and then strategy as to emerging and current leaders being about resilience and sustainability is today’s change factor. Business plans, strategic plans, strategic reports; and related development workshops, retreats, and communications channels all matter. But along with the tools and space to be Strategy Innovators together; StratGen helps with analogies and metaphors like Strategic Aikido.

The business world, the Management Consulting Legacy Space, and business school professors have generated long lists of strategy practices and corresponding books and articles. One of the best for the entrepreneurial idea search phase is Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) and the BOS Strategy Canvas. The StratGen Solution Design Futures Matrix is another way. What’s different about StratGen is a desire to allow emerging and current leaders in any sector to explore strategy, innovation, and risk with empathy and a genius ethic… as we establish resilience and then sustainability… right where we all live: in Our Municipalities.

What aids strategy or is relevant to strategy — and one of the many definitions of strategy is our way to identify and address challenges — is strategic. That American Liberal Democracy Way must be as empathetic and ethical as possible. So, let’s strategically cope, coordinate, and maneuver together… as Strategy Innovators.

One thing in history is clear: It is usually better to do strategy than have it done to us.

The Strategy Innovators

When a coach at a small business center or a business school professor asks the new entrepreneur or student what problem are they trying to solve; that’s a useful step to becoming a Strategy Innovator. A key component of the StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 (SI 2) Platform is Strategic Thinking. Design Thinking has become quite popular; but the effort to involve leaders in Strategic Thinking goes back further.

Both Strategic Thinking and Design Thinking have similarities to Galileo’s scientific method as to forming hypotheses and theory; and then praxis… where the term practice derives. Not all of us are going to be doctors and lawyers; but whatever our professions are we can have a practice of applying strategy in that domain.

Unfortunately, the concept of a strategist is probably connected to being at the top of the corporate, military, and/or political food chain. Being an innovator may mean emulating Elon Musk for some folks.

So, StratGen supports emerging and existing leaders in any sector in developing as Strategy Innovators who have capabilities in Strategic Thinking, Strategic Management (see SI 2 OSM), and Co-Creation in a manner that establishes resilience and then sustainability right where we live: in Our Municipalities.

The healthcare practice of clinical or diagnostic reasoning is a good Strategic Thinking ‘fundamentals’ metaphor. StratGen goes further by adding principles of modern innovation and risk to Strategic Thinking; which is common sense.

Feel free to look up the use of the terms entrepreneurship and strategy in the United States over the past 20 years with Google Trends using the Compare function. The use of strategy is vastly greater than entrepreneurship. So, how could America’s schools and small business centers fail to connect strategy with entrepreneurial training?

Inexplicably, rural and urban entrepreneurs may not have been learning how to discuss that ‘market and operational problem-solving’ conceptualization aspect of building a business as a Strategy Statement. One of the StratGen tools is a Strategy Statement Template with initiative description. If the initiative is about a business; fine.

Our local leaders in government, business, nonprofits, healthcare, education, and certainly our scientists, all need a different way of doing Municipal Success. And young folks actually desiring to lead with empathy and a sustainability-oriented form of leadership need a new Human Ecosystem to develop and connect the dots of Municipal Success… Municipality to Municipalities (M2M).

A group of Strategy Innovators from across the nation in the SI 2 Lab can form an association to change the game in any domain. Strategy Innovators define the 21st Century term of game change:

Game Change, noun

an event, idea, or procedure that effects a significant shift in the current manner of doing or thinking about something. 

– Oxford Languages

Instead of moving to an allied liberal democracy; what are options for the rest of us? Whether you are a student age 18 or older; or a business owner, professor, politician, or any leader in any sector, obtaining a free seat in the new SI 2 Lab Strategy Innovators Academy is ensured by publishing a commentary on American Liberal Democracy in your local newspaper. Keep in mind the New York Times and other publications take submissions from across America.

Strategy is The Way.

Is your city, town, and/or county a Municipal Success story?

So, how are mayors and other politicians trained to deal with Strategy for Municipal Success?

Not knowing if our politicians study the same playbooks as to American Liberal Democracy and Municipal Success means there is a big X where their ability to generate ideas connected to forming a “more perfect Union” goes.

StratGen supports Main Street USA entrepreneurship. But also policy entrepreneurship centered in American Liberal Democracy; As to transit the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should hope most US citizens are on the same page as to a version of American Liberal Democracy capable of establishing resilience and then sustainability: right where we all live — rural or urban — in Our Municipalities.

As we individually, and even as whole cities, towns, and counties across the United States of America, process the vast range of issues in front of us daily; attempt to identify challenges worthy of our focus; and then actually participate in the development of solutions that lead to resilience enhancing solutions that lead to sustainable outcomes… that is looking like really, really hard and distressing work. There are actually a lot of ideas and lots of strategic plans and strategic reports that are out there.

The Intellectual Capital, and primarily Intellectual Capital rebirth in a sense beyond mere corporate valuation, around citizenship in context to American Liberal Democracy is what’s weak. Each US municipality needs to support the other in such leadership development issues as we establish resilience and then sustainability. We need find current leaders and develop emerging ones able to rethink how we interface with strategy, innovation, and risk as individuals, organizations, and M2M Human Ecosystems.

Strategy is The Way.

Mass ‘non-strategic’ adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is just one part of a low point in American Liberal Democracy. AI is an example of a trend affecting us all across a set of Environmental, Economic, Societal, and Governance factors for Municipal Success: our Critical Success Factors.

Instead of wondering who is leading on the multidomain environmental, economic, societal, and governance (EESG) Critical Success Factors of Municipal Success; just look in the mirror.

And AI is doing absolutely nothing to help develop leaders in any sector — not just politicians— who know why avoiding National Strategic Failure means a large pool of citizens practicing Municipal Success around American Liberal Democracy; everywhere, always. So, StratGen develops Strategy Innovators who interface with strategy, innovation, and risk differently than in the past.

Since none of us have ever seen a Municipal Success Guidebook and Framework that help us lead around these new Critical Success Factors, StratGen is launching the SI 2 Lab to support such initiatives. The SI 2 Lab is for your initiative related to establishing resilience and then sustainability, right where we all live, in Our Municipalities.

Building Strategic Thinking muscle with others in a co-creation space while we all work on Municipal Success across the nation is part of the SI 2 Lab experience. Along with Strategic Thinking being a basic talent of Strategy Innovators; keeping track of our Critical Success Factors means an Open Strategic Management (OSM) platform. In terms of software, StratGen uses off-the-shelf solutions many will find affordable. Combined with the Social Synergy of the SI Lab, OSM is the set of Intellectual Capital tools and spaces that incites value creating SI 2 Dynamism. 

Measuring Municipal Success

Ideas like the Wellbeing Economy are not easily adoptable in most US municipalities; or certainly my many state legislatures which can be impediments to sustainability.

Where is America headed?

Today’s emerging and current leaders most likely are missing out on the kind of co-creative reasoning — not unlike clinical or diagnostic reasoning used by health professionals; but as to the synthesis of municipal-national-global health — that looks for what’s next from the leading edge of the Strategic Innovation Frontier out into the future as to avoiding National Strategic Failure; inclusive of our local experiences. Whatever the diagnostic risk level, the best strategy is formed and empathetic, ethical actions are taken. Ideally with a certain convention of competence; and even genius.

“One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. […]”

― MLK

StratGen provides part of the formula and forum for Municipal Success. That work starts with tools like the Strategy Concept Pyramid. Then after we start visualizing our version of interfacing with strategy, innovation, and risk we concurrently breakdown next steps with the Center of Gravity with Maneuver (COG-M) Model.

As we move forward together and develop new Strategy Innovator capabilities; the limits of what is possible in any target Solution Design Arena may remain. But the basics of strategy being a dynamic way to crush issues and translate them to definitive winning outcomes within that scoped space becomes more and more powerful.

Strategy is your answer as a Strategy Innovator to Municipal Success challenges.

What combinations of strategy, innovation, and risk do we face in achieving modern public good ambitions; right where we live: in Our Municipalities? StratGen works with emerging leaders (i.e. students age 18 and older); as well as existing leaders in government, business, nonprofit, healthcare, education, faith, and other domains dedicated to sustainability. Whether or not a large government, corporate, or philanthropic contract engages StratGen is secondary.

“[Strategy is] about getting more out of a situation than the starting balance of power would suggest. It’s the art of creating power.” 

– Lawrence Freedman

Sometimes creative analogies and metaphors are used to elucidate going from an undesirable current state and beginning to set forth on a journey to a new reality.

One of the “Toto. I’ve a feeling we’re are not in Kansas anymore.” moments these days might be realizing how little education there is about American Liberal Democracy. There is less about Aikido. But both are ethical, defensive power ‘platforms’ when practiced properly. So, if it helps; think of this new SI 2 Platform as Strategic Aikido.

Let’s explore the X Factor Future of America’s cities, towns, and counties…

Together as Strategy Innovators.

The anxiety you may be feeling as a mayor, a small business owner, a nonprofit leader, a professor, or as student who believes issues of civil rights, sustainability, and good governance; are part of harmful symptoms connected to terrible trends with outcomes like mass powerlessness, confusion, and fear.

One of the fastest ways to benefit from personal resilience is to lead where others will not or cannot. There is no alleviating pill or talk therapy that will replace the feeling of knowing you and others like you are working with strategy, innovation, and risk with a empathetic genius ethic that ended up saving the future… even at the last minute of the eleventh hour.

SratGen does not make guarantees about the future. But by doing more and more Mind-Wasting things along with wasting precious time as we face National Strategic Failure; we are all guaranteed to end up looking at each other on an especially bad and asking each other an∂ our selves, “Why didn’t we do more, better, and faster?”

For many, the Age of Enlightenment is as dead as DEIA is. Civil Rights? Dead.

So too Climate Protection and other sustainability Critical Success Factors. Disappeared.

Whether a freshman university student or a retired city manager, StratGen encourages folks in different corners of the nation to learn to coordinate our resources and use a new formula and forum for interfacing with common challenges.

One way to describe strategy is a set of integrated choices that form our way to win. Strategy is still mainly thought of a something for corporations and military leaders. Urban Planning is one of the strategic things a municipality does.

But if we cannot select a set of success-oriented choices from options like these; issues like empathetic, ethical leadership visioning is a problem:

American Liberal Democracy

Make America Unsustainable

Deep Energy Conservation

National Strategic Failure

Sustainable America Engine

If strategy is not our way to win backed with congruence, consistency, and coherence in empathetic, ethical leadership… Well, that explains a lot as to America’s current SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Treat) analysis.

Why avoid National Strategic Failure?

Ideas from the Legacy Management Consulting Space are not always ideal; however since the kind of capabilities needed to excel at establishing resilience and then sustainability — right where we live: in Our Municipalities — are not always consistent or even available in many parts of the nation, it makes sense to develop our own capabilities… together as Strategy Innovators.

It turns out there has been a massive issue of waste, fraud, and abuse when it comes to climate change strategy. Most US citizens cannot absorb a fraction of the issues, challenges, solutions, and outcomes. The Climate Protection strategic management space is more that being aware of solar panels and wind turbines. Much more.

As we pass the epic 1.5 C Anthro Climate Threshold well before prior estimates of the past… we can change our minds. A term like ‘Anthro Climate’ will be new and hard for many folks. But connected terms like Anthropocene, Anthropogenic (human-caused), and Anthropology are more or less conventional wisdom.

The controlling positions of those who benefit from the new Banking on Chaos report; and what we might well refer to as ‘Industrial Scale Deception-Centered Fossil Fuel Optimism’ (FFO) as to reports from the US House of Representatives and Union of Concerned Scientists, are about institutionalizing powerlessness among the American citizenry. StratGen is finally about instilling agency for US citizens devoted to sustainability and American Liberal Democracy. There is certainly more going on these days beyond voting.

StratGen helps all of us work with frameworks like Climate Protection Information Integrity as we advance with our own interpretations of being Strategy Innovators practicing a new empathetic, ethical genius.

The SI 2 Lab is the first M2M Human Ecosystem built for Municipal Success Discovery and Action. Please join the SI 2 Lab and contact StratGen about co-created client projects.

Join the SI 2 Lab

Let’s be Strategy Innovators… together.

“Americans will always do the right thing; after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” 

– Prime Minister Winston Churchill