Strategy Statements

Once the first few paragraphs describing a new or renewing initiative — which can include a ‘startup’ business, entire new nonprofit, or government unit — a mind map of sub components can be laid out with plan phases. Conversely, the focusing strategy statement with purpose, mission, vision, values, and people served (The Way) can get more definition.

As you assess if you are working with a dynamism of strategy, Innovation, and risk in an advantageous manner, please take a few minutes and review JFK’s famous moon landing initiative speech as an example of something Strategy Innovators might refer to as Strategic Innovation Mind Leadership. There are pieces to the sustainability puzzle for each decade leading up to 2050; just like the US Space Program components were on the table in 1962. It’s not that there is zero ‘Sustainability on Earth’ equivalent of the impact and popularity of the US Space Program as of 1969 backed with the kind of resources JFK organized before his death.

One of the SI 2 components is Strategic Communication. And Strategic Communication starts with a basically simple task: develop a strategy statement to guide any given initiative. A StratGen workshop can definitely include crafting a strategy statement if one is needed.

JFK’s following historic “We choose to go to the Moon” speech is a case study in what a compelling strategy statement includes; and thus translates into a range of Strategic Communication outputs.

The value variance between rethinking Earth Sustainability as the primary human endeavor in contrast to whatever else strategic innovation has been to date is worthy of substantive estimation; and then take action by doing new with Solution Design and coordinating around this new strategy statement with other Strategy Innovators; and executing on that renewing dynamic.

We can afford to design an alternative to where we are today and move on a new era following the technological impacts of the past 200 years. It can start with people discussing what this Earth Sustainability Mission looks like; and that work is well under way. There are many sustainability oriented platforms; but none yet like SI 2.

Starting where we live, in Our Municipalities, means much of America working together differently than otherwise today. Figuring out what the American Sustainability ‘big picture leadership agenda’ looks like for the next few years is worth a fresh look with renewing perspective connected to SI 2 and Strategy Innovators working together across the nation. It isn’t completely untrue that a lot of time and resources were wasted since Climate Protection and sustainability were coming into view back in 1990 with the Kyoto Protocol; and as questions about how BAU (‘business-as-usual’) globalization was going to work out emerged. However, this is the perfect time to see what doing new with SI 2 might mean for America and the globe.

As this is an eighteen minute video, reading the transcript is an alternative.

“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? 

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. 

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.”

President John F. Kennedy at Rice University, Houston, Texas
September 12, 1962

Sure enough, even though President Kennedy didn’t live to see the day, there were humans on the moon before 1970 arrived.

What sort of things do American leaders and their stakeholders want to see happen before 2030 and then as 2050 approaches? Let me know. Let others know as we develop together as Strategy Innovators. This is the right time to share and coordinate around great American ideas of the past; and then shape the future with a new ethical, empathetic ‘group genius’ as Strategy Innovators. That new dynamism seems timely and necessary.

Grant Millin, Strategy Innovator and StratGen CEO