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Strategy is a way to win that delivers a more desirable outcome. And a lot of the time it means courage in the face of Business-as-Usual (BAU) and an empathetic genius ethic versus just making millions and billions of BAU dollars.
StratGen supports leaders and their stakeholders in forging resilience, wellbeing, and sustainability components of total Municipal Success… with a vision + action engine called the StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 Platform (SI 2). These leaders and their stakeholders can go on to create, spread, accelerate, and intercept challenges as Strategy Innovators with their own approaches to SI 2.
Local comprehensive planning is not just urban planning or siloed economic development revised every 2-5 years. So, what is the system wide Sustainable America Engine powered transition to date? If the ‘big picture’ matters today; what is it and how owns it these days?
Words like integration and synergy can sound horribly ‘jargonish’ for some. But what do we have to work with if we strategically fail at self-governing from the local level back up to state, Federal, and global levels?
“[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
While strategy is being revitalized in American culture to a certain extent; the context is almost business profitability only. Strategy can also be generated of an extremely risky nature; even if language about innovation is thrown in a lot.
A lot of folks recommend more action versus vision today. But think about vision versus blind spots. What are some major blind spots facing a concept like Municipal Success today? StratGen can discuss your individual, team, and organization issues as well.
Commerce is a segment of sustainability; however StratGen SI 2 is about a new version of economic development: Municipal Success. How you and your interests are represented with a new combination of resilience, wellbeing, and sustainability connecting where we live — in Our Municipalities — are issues StratGen welcomes in the SI 2 Lab.
StratGen provides tools and space for leaders in most any sector to cope, coordinate, and maneuver as we establish resilience and then sustainability; where we live: in Our Municipalities. Working with strategy, innovation, and risk with new sight and in new combinations — and with as much of an ethic of empathetic genius as possible — is how to turn the tides of whatever undesirable X Factor Future is headed our way in order to set things right.
The outcome of the 2024 presidential election is here; as well as the long range high magnitude impact when it comes to risk. There is a kind of value attached to those related risk factors; similar to those risks of Bush vs. Gore. All of us landed at a High Magnitude Truth today as to the consequences of the related past choices and actions.
What does ‘moving on’ look like this time... and what are the outcomes… designed and decided by whom?
StratGen democratizes the processes and outcomes of strategy, innovation, and risk for as many leaders and developing leaders [students 18+] as possible as we determine what resilience, wellbeing, and sustainability needs to look like now. The space to do that work is the SI 2 Lab.
And yet Election Day 2024 is in the past. So is the chance to avoid the 1.5 Celsius Anthropogenic Global Warming threshold and consequential Earth System Change outlined in the Paris Agreement. 2023 was the first year this epoch setting breech occurred. This is why Hurricane Helene was so devastating to a deep inland city like Asheville, NC and other parts of Western North Carolina.
It is the X Factor Future we can begin to process with Solution Design starting today. We can begin to maneuver to a new High Magnitude Value position: established factors of resilience, wellbeing, and sustainability combined to define a modern concept of Municipal Success. It most certainly is not too late to reform what most thought sustainability was about add insert a renewing approach to strategy, innovation, and risk into American Liberal Democracy.
And…
The map is not the terrain.
The road map of economics; of politics… and of systems relationships, such as how physical geography (E.g., ’The Climate’) was supposed to work in subservience to economic and political conventional wisdom… or how one social group fits into the worldview of another, are likely maps charted prior to these current times of divergent turns that are often unlisted.
The terrain for coming years may be incompatible for conventions of past strategic planning methods. StratGen supports the development of Strategy Innovators and their power aims of ethical value. Strategy Innovators interface with issues of strategy, Innovation, risk, and Social Synergy with leadership skills suitable for these times.
Strategy is part of The Way. The Way is part of strategy. Cambridge Dictionary has a definition of strategy that simply says strategy in part is a way of doing things.
It’s worth it to stop and review how we are doing Climate Protection. What’s the largest group of action-oriented leaders in the greatest number of municipalities willing to agree Climate Protection is a good term to develop into outcomes?
Redefining strategy away from corporate and military contexts is vital. Issues like Climate Protection have macro and micro contexts. Reworking who needs skills in strategy, innovation, and risk and how to develop minds ready for activities like Climate Protection Strategy is part of how StratGen supports leaders and their stakeholders in coping, coordinating, and maneuvering.
Plans always have a role. And yet a new way of doing things that takes plenty of what still works with Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management into account — and is about coping, coordinating, and especially maneuvering, with new road mapping capabilities at hand… is likely part of the ‘new normal’. This is likely a normalcy where achieving resilience and then sustainability — where we live: in Our Municipalities — is about building new strategy platforms. And where actual transformation is often the daily baseline.
The word strategy is becoming a bit more popular. Of course, popularity and strategy are not always synonymous… and yet strategy and a term like Social Synergy — as to who and how many get behind the best, most ethical strategy available — are not at all mutually exclusive.
Interacting with strategy, innovation, risk, and Social Synergy is both art and science. The arts are familiar to StratGen. The StratGen Strategic Innovation 2.0 Platform (SI 2) has origins in both the arts and management science; as well as real world events like the historic Hydrogen Road Tour and Hurricane Helene.
Along with a common reference to governing like the Public Policy Cycle, one core Strategy Innovators tool StratGen shares with clients and SI 2 Lab members is the above Strategy Concept Pyramid alongside the SI 2 Power Sphere.
If purpose, mission, vision, values, and social connection seem like missing parts of the Concept of Strategy… The Way component of SI 2 fills that all out.
The SI 2 Lab is the first M2M (Municipality to Municipalities) Human Ecosystem built for Municipal Success Discovery and Action.
If strategy is a ‘jargony’ term few understand or can use to create new and renewing value (I.e., innovation) in these times of trial; then strategy is a source of failure… which is a likely scenario. There is a place for Strategic Management with its planning mode and goals, objectives, sub strategies, and action plans… action plans which need to connect to skilled project management.
Orca, or ‘Killer Whales’, have no way to be as powerful and as potentially dangerous as humans. But they are a metaphor for what is rare and dynamic in nature. If we are searching for High Magnitude Truth leading to High Magnitude Value with something like Artificial Intelligence (AI); that’s sad.
Orca Strategy
Metaphors that drive imagination, dynamism, and action may be harder to come by these days. Whales, polar bears, and other animals being presented as important for ecological ethics and human behavior modification had some effect in the past.
Orcas may seem intimidating; but they are no where near as destructive as humans can be potentially. StratGen refers to the basic strategy practitioner and insight development work that possibly gets generated in a single StratGen and client co-created workshop as Orca Strategy. The product of our interaction will get a name and branding later if for an organization or municipality; and can be your individual personal level strategic innovation roadmap.
But before we begin, we can call it ‘something different about to happen’; similar to the open state of potential behind the Japanese symbol Enso. Or just to be REALLY different, let’s call the X Factor Future strategy that’s needed to fill our so many of our challenges Orca Fusion Strategy.
Orca Strategy is deliberate, dynamic maneuvering designed to achieve a desired outcome or outcomes… with teeth. Corporations and Small to Medium Enterprises may find a new wave of Strategic Thinking to be welcomed. But the idea of reframing strategy as a bit wild and much more alive with the strength of referencing the amazing yet totally fragile and basically totally endangered Orca is not just about corporations and the enhancing what damage has been done by corporate globalization; with some management consulting firms playing a major role in the downside of neoliberalism.
A twist on sustainability that often comes from inside multibillion dollar management consulting corporations is a hallmark of their reputation rehabilitation efforts. Otherwise, StratGen researches the practices of the firms as reverse engineering their outcomes but keeping many of their processes and engaging their talent is useful.
Coming up with something that matters, is about actual change, and is of high magnitude [let’s call it Orca Strategy versus the routine] means developing Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management. Leadership matters, but there’s got to be something else going on about what the word leadership means today. Democratizing the ins and outs of Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management means more and better American leaders.
If Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management are not available and therefore cannot connect to and influence the future; then Climate Protection and therefore resilience and sustainability — where we live: in Our Municipalities — should be expected to stay elusive. What examples of local, state level, Federal, and global leadership reference how to think about and respond to our many challenges?
In the confluence of Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management, artifacts like strategic reports, strategic plans, and business plans are generated. Strategic Thinking and Strategic Management are engines of our Power Spheres: For individuals; for teams; for organizations; for government; and for local comprehensive plans… that one would think are comprehensive as to who and what is going on within the boarders of cities, towns, and counties across the nation.
The StratGen SI 2 shared capabilities are not about one 3-5 year strategic plan that gets filed as yet another PDF.
The Cambridge Dictionary definition of strategy includes that strategy is a way of doing things. That special way of doing things is about skills, values, and organization capabilities. So, there is strategy.
The words idea and strategy have strong similarities; and so idea generation and developing strategy should have similar high-level status at the start of anyone’s strategy concept work.
Co-Creation
Whether it is a strategic issue related to Climate Protection, social or economic equity, the number of challenges common to the majority of US municipalities of most any size is a list that doesn’t seem to grow smaller over time. There is no reason for individual leaders; students developing as leaders; organizations in any sector; and various parts of the US Government [which includes local and state government] to coordinate better.
In the corporate world and as to large universities, the term innovation ecosystem is familiar. NASA is an innovation ecosystem for public good with a long history of spinning off value to many aspects of American life.
Innovation ecosystems, platform innovation; and lesser known terms like Open Innovation and Co-Innovation. StratGen aids in Municipal to Municipalities (M2M) Co-Creation. One of the StratGen SI 2 Dynamic Services is Open Strategic Management. The outcomes most municipalities are looking for have a lot of commonality and there is no point in opening up the national strategic management ‘big picture’ at this point.
In this Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) era, generating both pragmatic and original confrontations of strategy, innovation, and risk can start with metaphors and analogy. Issues of Climate Protection and lack thereof are literally unprecedented. So, StratGen has an art element to the SI 2 Dynamism Flywheel.
We can use some of the practices of high level corporate and government Strategic Innovation for public good right where we live: in Our Municipalities.
Ideas and Strategy. Strategy and Ideas. The definition of idea is similar to the definition of strategy. Innovation without strategy can happen; but innovation is weaker because of that incongruence.
Humans are about strategy and ideas as much as anything else we are about.
The SI 2 Lab is an example of StratGen being part of America’s resilience and sustainability ideas marketplace.
SI 2 Dynamism is for Municipal Success
Strategy Innovators working together in the SI 2 Lab — and the Gestalt, or sum experience, of SI 2 interactions and interfaces with tools like Solution Design — is SI 2 Dynamism.
What might the byproducts of Municipal Success Discovery and Action be in the future? Because need a resilience and sustainability edge for certain; and urgently.
If you think you know what Municipal Success is, your Strategy Innovator abilities are needed. If you want to develop as a Strategy Innovator, there is a new association in development for you. The SI 2 Lab is for both knowers and learners as we establish resilience and then sustainability… right where we live: in Our Municipalities.
Think of Apple’s 2000 – 2020 transformation; and/or NASA numerous successes in ratio to its failures when imagining what Strategic Innovation is about. And a new definition of Strategic Innovation is needed for these times in any case; along with not enough demonstrations of Strategic Innovation showing up locally as to establishing resilience and then sustainability.
And or course, we need to go all the way back to FDR’s New Deal and President Johnson’s Great Society to see Strategic Innovation as more than ‘Big Tech’; as transformation often seems to center around currently. A National Bureau of Economic Research study reminds us that for America, the Operation Warp Speed example of Strategic Innovation to deliver COVID 19 vaccines in ‘crisis innovation’ mode is not unfamiliar territory.
We can also lead in moving from Anthropogenic Climate to Climate Protection modes. Our municipalities is where Climate Protection needs to happen and where all the beneficiaries live.
So, we deserve a platform to work out where we want to head next. By no means are just any combination of strategy, innovation, and risk managing practices and outcomes good for us. Agreed it would have been better to sort out what resilience and sustainability looks like at this point as well. So, there is plenty to do with strategy, innovation, and risk.
One way to think about Strategic Innovation is very high value from interacting with strategy, existing innovation, and risk in purposeful ways. Like sending people to the moon and as a result getting solar photovoltaics, fuel cells, and micro computing as byproducts from the NASA platform.
A new Municipality to Municipalities platform rates a new way of thinking combined with the right tools and space. That’s SI 2.
It should be that most Americans recognize that a municipality is not just a large urban area. If America’s rural areas are not important for some, that’s a real problem.
Join the Strategy Innovators
A Strategy Innovator can be a university student about to launch a new career as well as a Mayor; other legislators; a city or county manager and their appointed leadership; a business owner; a doctor; a nurse; an educator; a nonprofit executive; you. What we once thought of as leadership over the past few decades may or may not be equating to the version of Municipal Success we might do well to discover and act upon today.
Along with joining the SI 2 Lab, please connect through the StratGen Ideas and Events page; the StratGen newsletter; or the contact form.
SI 2 Dynamism is what happens when we Get Together about the Future
According to MIT, one definition of platform innovation — platform innovation being one form of strategic innovation — is:
“[…] environments, computing or otherwise, that connect different groups and derive benefits from others participating in the platform. The underlying concept covers companies from Google to Facebook […]”
Should a universal concept of Municipal Success be difficult to define?
Why can’t such an important idea be more ‘101’?
What is the management of strategy, innovation, risk, and Social Synergy for purposes of establishing resilience and then sustainability… where we live: in Our Municipalities. Are we getting better at making where we live work for most people? What if ‘most people’ starts with strategic focus on those at the base of the economic pyramid?
However much personal experience we may or may not have in developing municipal comprehensive plans and other strategic plans, we can afford to take a fresh look at how Municipal Success is defined and developed today. For some, a Tourism Development Authority and a Business Improvement District connected to very traditional approaches to Economic Development Strategy, entrepreneurship, and corporate recruitment to help create the basis of Municipal Success.
Strategy, Innovation, and Risk = Sustainable Value Creation
Sustainable Municipalities have a lot of factors feeding into what that sustainability criteria might be about at this point in history. The time, scope / quality, and financial issues about whether there are upside or downside outcomes include most Americans. Rural towns and counties are municipalities too.
It should be conventional wisdom that strategy and innovation integrate. There’s a strategy behind AI deployment and other technology. Our politicians will have an innovative approach to strategy. The domains can be different; but strategy and innovation work with the upsides and downsides of risk… globally.
Strategic Innovation is something many Americans experience on a regular basis through ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The platforms and innovation ecosystems behind NASA, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Facebook
The next 25 years rate a new approach to value creation in contrast to Sustainability 1.0. New approaches, practices, and systems that often simply repurpose and redesign what is already being done that works and is familiar is StratGen Management Consulting for Public Good backed with the SI 2 suite of dynamic services.
So, 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
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
Strategy Innovators… together.