ep 29 Stuck in a Divide | How Future Back Strategy Restores Progress

If you're in the US, you probably want something very similar, which is stability, not the stultifying kind of deadening stability, but the kind that you can plan around and raise your family and your children in, stability that you can run a business within, you know, one that you can plan for a future for your kids, your communities, your neighborhoods, places where you can explore opportunities, not have them taken away from you for whatever reason. But it seems as if the current political divide is in the way of what used to be that kind of stability. It's the Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast, Episode 29. Let's imagine for a moment that you are a citizen or a resident of the United States. You love the country and especially quite fond of the vision of the Founding Fathers. However, you're distressed by the degree, the extent of the current-day political divide. It's hijacked popular attention all the way around the world. People, some people actually seem to despise each other, want to harm each other at the extreme. Is there a way to find inspiration beyond the current uncertainty? Can leaders possibly come together in the United States if only they took a long-term view of the country and the world? Tune into this long overdue episode to join me in tackling this wicked problem. I'm Francis Wade and welcome to the Jump Leap Long Term Strategy Podcast. I have some good news. If you're viewing or listening to this episode before June 26th, 2025, that's a Thursday, then you may be in time to catch our annual conference, the Long-Term Strategy Conference. Simply check out strategyconf.fwconsulting.com. See you there. And welcome back. If this is the first time that you're joining our podcast, you may be wondering exactly how things work. This is a solo version, and our episodes are divided into two sections. The first has to do with diagnosing, and in the first piece where I'm doing all the diagnosing, so to speak, you're— I'm hoping that you will actually pick up on some of the underlying principles that I'm using to examine the current situation. This is a lot better than just telling you what I think right off the bat. Because here you're free to say or free to hear what I say and then agree with it, disagree with it, but at least you know where it came from and the frameworks and the assumptions that I'm using to look at a current situation. And here I'm stealing, not my idea, comes from Einstein. Einstein said, if you give me an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and then 5 minutes thinking about the solutions. So we're gonna spend more time here talking about or looking at the problem itself. So if you are resonating with what you're hearing in this solo episode, I invite you to join me in tackling this and other problems. Share your insights at longtermstrategy.info. Look for this episode and look for an opportunity to drop a comment. So let's start with a story. Amanda is a wealthy heiress of a major corporation. A fictional wealthy heiress. She's also a political independent and has the trust of many influential folks on both sides of the political spectrum. In fact, her family has produced congressmen, couple of congressmen for both major parties within the last century. She's a strong believer in the United States of America and its principles, founding principles. However, she is dismayed by the acrimony she hears on a daily basis. The depth of disagreement is not simply about differences in opinion. It appears as if it's personal with a goal of personal and almost direct destruction of other people. There are some people who aren't happy, who don't become happy until their opponents, opponents are annihilated. But at the same time, she remembers some simple lessons from her time as a neighborhood community chairperson. There were different opinions floating around regarding a recent spate of burglaries many of which were strongly held by her neighbors. She was instrumental in calling some meetings. They were very contentious, but the breakthrough came when she realized that everyone in the neighborhood wanted the very same outcomes. She just needed to take them, all of them, far enough into the future where their commitments overlapped. Borrowing from that idea, she's thinking of setting up a bipartisan NGO, non-governmental organization, to call for the creation of some kind of shared vision for the United States. But can it be done when the leaders and the movers and shakers in politics and in finance and in business are so short-term oriented. So guys, I did say this was a wicked problem. This is not an easy one. And I imagine that if you're listening, whether you're in the United States or not, you probably have a vested interest in what I'm about to talk about. The reason is that, well, since January, things have changed. And what much of what the world has come to rely on, if you're outside of the United States, from the US has been changed. The stability that the whole, you know, the economics of the world, the politics of the world, that's changed, been taken away. Now, I'm going to warn you as I get into this that you will hear my political views coming through. But this is not a platform to share those political views. We're here to talk about a strategy that applies regardless of your political background and ideas that work regardless of your persuasion, political persuasion. If you're in the US, you probably want something very similar, which is stability, not the stultifying kind of deadening stability. But the kind that you can plan around and raise your family and your children in. Stability that you can run a business within, you know, one that you can plan for a future for your kids, your communities, your neighborhoods, places where you can explore opportunities, not have them taken away from you for whatever reason. But it seems as if the current political divide is in the way of what used to be that kind of stability. So the US was seen by many countries, most countries, as an extremely desirable, sort of stable senior partner. And that's changed. And now the level of instability has meant that even if, you know, miraculously the current administration were to, you know, sort of solidify and then continue some new, a new norm, in the back of the minds of companies and of countries around the world, the US would never be seen the way it was. Because there'll always be the possibility of an election coming in and then going into another cycle of upheaval. So these changes, these sudden changes, and the, the going from the one extreme to the other and the acrimony that, that goes with it has meant that companies have been thrown through a loop. The things that they could plan and assume have meant that, well, they can't any longer. And the things that they used to look up to the United States to provide as an example to the rest of the world, well, that's just gone away. I imagine that if you're listening to this from Canada, I could just imagine what that's like because perhaps of all of the countries in the world, Canadians perhaps assumed the most and have been surprised the most that if you have a business in Canada, you didn't question the continuity of the United States, its legal system, its political system, its economic system, that it would continue and you would always benefit from it. And by not questioning it, you probably have allowed yourself, if you're a business owner, to think more and more short-term. Because if you're Canadian, you know, things weren't changing that much. And the belief was that, you know, the long-term is pretty much going to look like it's always looked, because that's how it is if you're a major neighbour and trading partner of the United States. So perhaps you never even questioned that any of the things that have happened since January, which have been surprising, would ever happen. Your mind couldn't conceive of it. As such, again, if you're a Canadian, I'll pick on the Canadians a little bit. You may be feeling a sense of panic, particularly if you're affected by tariffs, and some degree of confusion because all of a sudden the core assumption that your business was built on, the core strategy, the reason why you didn't have to do long-term planning that you could focus on the short term, all those assumptions and background and context has now been changed. So internally, you, you, you feel a sense of, of anxiety that wasn't there before. So the world has come to see the US as a way more unreliable partner than the country has ever been since, at least since before the World War, before the Second World War. And as I said before, with elections coming every 4 years, now countries and companies are going to be watching what's going to be happening because you take your eye off the ball and all of a sudden there is a factor or a leader that you didn't predict, that you didn't plan around, uh, whose policies cause you to question and change your strategy. And, uh, in the US itself, as long as this problem sort of persists then they only deepen the divide that I talked about before, and they give it more fuel, and they create more reasons or a greater expectation that they'll continue. But, but is this a matter of just watching things slip from bad to worse? Within the United States, is there a way for— to bring people together that could give anyone in the world, uh, maybe a, a, an example of what to do when this happens, when polarization takes over? Is there a way to go from extreme uncertainty like, so, which the world hasn't seen since the Second World War, to certainty, to, to something that you can plan around, something that you can, uh, um, rely on and therefore, um, count on. So I'm gonna be offering a point of view which comes from long-term strategic thinking. It's very different from the old point of view, which is that, you know, a strong country like the United States doesn't need to think about the long term. It just can focus on what's happening soon, that it sets the long term. Context, its very presence and its weight, its power, its influence, its portion of the world economy, its democracy, its high standards in so many areas. You know, it's what the founding fathers put into its constitution. The fact that it has a constitution and the fact that it's followed, that these things have allowed US companies— I own a US company and Canadian companies and many others around the world— only need therefore to focus on kind of today because tomorrow was going to be more of the same. So when you believe that, a lot of the context, a lot of the background that you swim in, the world you live in is going to be the same. You don't have to plan around it. Saying this now because this is just the way this has unfolded and why it's caught so many people by surprise. So you need a way. I would say we need a way. The world needs a way. But let's, let's take the case that Amanda needs a way to think about this problem so that she can do the right thing with her NGO and tackle the problem with the right way. So this problem isn't solved. You can imagine that our future will be more and more of the uncertainty that I described that if, you know, the, the, uh, polar opposite to the current administration comes into power, that it's going to be about reversing a whole bunch of stuff, which will throw again more uncertainty and more discontinuity, uh, into the mix. It's just that the timing would be slightly different, be a few years away as opposed to right now. And in the past, you know, what we would think that, well, this kind of long-term thinking isn't really necessary. Again, because the assumption was that things would continue. And, you know, by the standards, if you're an American company, by the standards of what happens in the rest of the world, you didn't really need to think that far into the future because things were so predictable in the good way. The bad way too, turns out. We now realize, but that, you know, you can relax, you can let your guard down when things are more or less going to be the same. And then there's a surprise comes and throws your business, your community, your family, your country throws it for a loop, and you realize that that wasn't a sustainable approach. This business of thinking short-term because you didn't need to think long-term because it seemed as if there would be all this continuity for you to rely on. So maybe there's a new kind of thinking that needs to be done by the United States, by Amanda, to bring this to a new kind of resolution that the country does not have the capacity to create. And maybe there's other countries that the United States could learn from. And, um, If this problem isn't solved, it will be bad for all of us in the world because we, we benefit from having a great example right in front of us. And when that great example is doing great things for the world, we all, we all gain from that. When it's not there and we're forced to find our own way, then boy, we're kind of like Amanda. We need to go find solutions if we're able, because there are many people who, in response to what's happening, who are experiencing emotional distress. They've become depressed. They don't— they believe this is a massive problem that's way bigger than them. And they can't do anything about it. Now, fortunately, Amanda isn't like that, but maybe as you listen, you may find that there are ways in which you can be part of the solution to this problem, this problem of sort of bipartisan— not, it's not bipartisan, it's both sides of the aisle being short-term oriented and not acting in a cohesive way. So let's call this the problem of our lifetime. But where could we possibly find solutions to this kind of challenge? Well, I bumped into a solution. I, I, I can't say that I was part of coming up with it at all. I only became aware of the nature of this solution about 4 or 5 years ago, and it has to do with national development planning, or more to the point, Vision 2030 Jamaica. So Vision 2030 Jamaica is a 50-year plan that was launched in 2009, comes to fruition in 2030, and it describes a future for Jamaica. Now, what's remarkable about this future for Jamaica is that we're not the only country to have this. There are some— I've seen various counts, there's 50 other countries, 100 other, 140 other countries. I've seen different, depends on how you define these national development plans. But we're not the first, but there is a process that we followed in the 2000s that was, is seen by those in the development community as sort of being exemplary. And it, from a strategic point of view, goes to how you can create a national vision and therefore a national strategy to go with it. So, There's a couple of clues that I'll offer you in this podcast. And if you're a US resident or a US citizen, or if you're good enough at pretending to be one, I offer this approach. And it's not that it's because it's a Jamaican approach per se, but because Jamaica's approach was seen as state of the art at the time. The 2000s, there are elements to it that are worthy of being copied. So essentially, I'm recommending the country of my birth, which is the US, that follow the country that I adopted later on in life, Jamaica. That Jamaica offer the US the approach that was used. So here's how it worked. In around 20— mm, 2003, between the head of a planning agency, name was Dr. Wesley Hughes, and I've talked to him at length to understand kind of what happened in that period and what the process was like. He and others at the same time came to a joint realization that the country needed to articulate a vision for itself, a measurable vision, smart vision, a common destination. So fortunately, the way this vision came about and the players that were involved in it and forming it, it took some 6 years to develop, And the 6 years covered different political parties, all of whom supported the process. So I can't underline that enough. This was no partisan activity. This was an effort, a conscious effort to put country over party. And Country Girl herself. So a little bit of background. Why, why was there this agreement to engage in this activity? Well, we Jamaicans almost had a civil war in 1980, and as a kid, I remember lying in bed and hearing gunshots at night between rival political gangs. So there were two different ideologies, one sort of right of center, one left of center. There were guns coming in from different places. There is, we come, we have a violent history given our history in slavery as a country and a toxic mix resulted and our murder rate went up from, It went up to 800 that year for a country of 2.9 million, at the time 2.3 perhaps. And it would more than double in a year because of the political strife. So coming out of that experience, there was a peaceful transfer of power, by the way, credit to our institutions, but there was a widespread agreement that we would never ever get that close to ruining our democracy ever again. So one thing that was put in place that has maintained and strengthened our democracy is an electoral commission, an independent commission. And it was set up in a way that it would be independent of any particular party. It would have the kind of teeth and the kind of intention was to give it the kind of respect that would allow it to prevail no matter what. And that's kept, that's for the last 40, 45 years that has been maintained. And any conversation around weakening its powers or changing its powers or altering its makeup is met by ordinary Jamaicans with alarm. Like, no, you must be mad. Do not touch the Electoral Commission because that is the protector of our democracy. And when we messed around with our voting systems and we had, you know, we had systems that were worse than Florida. And our systems became better. And I voted in Florida, voted in Jamaica. I could tell you Jamaican system was way better than the one in Florida, hanging chads and whatnot. And we have viewed the creation of that system as a major part of our democracy, as in we don't touch that part. That's essential. For keeping us from anarchy, chaos, and a potential civil war. So the conviction in 2003 that grew into creating a national vision, a single vision for all, comes in part from how close we came to losing our democracy. So the process that was followed during the period, that 6-year period, 2003 to 2009, involved extremely wide consultation. Civic society, different industries. I saw some of the reports that came from the industry studies that were done by public sector, private sector, NGOs. Hundreds of people were involved in creating this national vision. It became essentially a destination that was more important than whoever was— happened to be in power, essentially mimicking what had happened with the Electoral Commission of Jamaica. That that was more important than whoever happened to be in power. So it's a little bit like creating and ring-fencing not just a constitution which tells you how the country should be run or set up, not just an Electoral Commission which tells you how an election should be conducted and how power should be transferred, but it rin fengs a vision of the country. And what this meant is that the elements of this vision are beyond question, that we've bought into them, these elements, and the parties don't compete on these elements. So in other words, they are protecting these elements or protecting this vision, and they did an excellent job of that until recently where there has been a bit of a— we have an election coming up, but the story is a success story. Now, from my point of view as an ordinary citizen who has looked into this and studied it, what I've noticed has happened is that we've accomplished a few things. One is to bring our debt-to-GDP ratio down from, I believe it was 143, and it's supposed to get to somewhere around 62 this year. That's just turned out to be an amazing accomplishment for our country. It's, it's really just a bit of a miracle. No, it's a bipartisan miracle. First thing, one administration couldn't do it. It began with one party. It's been continued by the other. And there's no way. This is no beyond question. In the sense that if a party even gives a hint that they're not interested in that, that they're going to lose. Because this is a core part of our economy that without it we would never have survived COVID. That's the common agreement. So where did that cooperation originate? I see it— the basis for it, the ethos around managing the vision of the country beyond the vision for the party began with that Vision 2030 process and that 6-year activity. It took us 6 years to create a 15-year vision. Now, I've done a little bit of studying, a little bit of study, the examples in other countries, and it sounds as if ours was pretty typical. Other countries also went through similar processes. And have seen similar kinds of results. Now, I haven't seen much cross-country investigations to sort of put together all the lessons learned. I believe that's badly needed. But from my reading and understanding and the amount of research that I could do with what I could find, that process of building consensus is game-changing in and of itself. The creation of that brand new destination, that brand new true north, not just one that is, you know, like liberty for all, not in the flowery language you might find, say, from the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States, not the kind of or here in Jamaica, out of many, one people. Not that kind of vague vision statement. I'm talking about the kind that a company would put together in a strategic planning retreat, which has metrics and a long-term 15 to 30 year time frame. So why am I insisting on that? So if you're a student of long-term strategy, and you've listened to this podcast, and perhaps you're going to be a part of our conference, um, coming up in June, you may be familiar with the notion that, uh, a strategy requires a due date. So the kind of vision, like a Vision 2030, that you plug into a strategy is not the vision statement It's not the purpose statement. It's not the kind of meme or cliché, not that kind of vague aspiration. It's something concrete and specific. And that's what a 15 to 30 year objective needs to look like. The vision needs to be specific. The destination needs to be so clear that you can say, We're either going to get there or we're not going to get there. So there are parts of Jamaica's Vision 2030, for example, we're not going to get there. And we're now saying it openly, okay, there are some elements that we're not going to accomplish. The next step is to now say, okay, which parts are we going to accomplish and how do we go after them in the next 5 years? So that would be the natural next step. But just like a company that creates a long-term strategy, the long-term vision that it relies on needs to be specific. So the Jamaican experience offers some clues as to what I would recommend. Perhaps the most recent accomplishment, and I say accomplishment with a not a capital A but a common here in Jamaica is that our murder rate has fallen by 35% since, uh, since a year ago. And that for us is an amazing accomplishment because we have one of the highest murder rates in the world. We've traditionally had that. It's been that way for several years, decades. Yes, decades. And, uh, It's come down. So Jamaicans are right now a bit wary of, you know, if we talk about it too much, it may go back up. We're not exactly sure about, as a people, as a society, about the exact drivers of it. It seems to be multiple drivers, some man-made, perhaps some demographic, but the numbers are moving in the right direction. Uh, but for me, I say it's part of Vision 2030. This is what that effort was designed to deliver. Even though we can't quite trace the cause and effect, 2.9 million people all agreeing on one destination produces a particular kind of magic that happens in companies that I've worked with as well. So when I discovered Vision 2030, it was just at the point where I was kind of pausing to look back and say, you know, at this point, and this is today, you know, I say we've worked with over 60 companies to create 15 to 30 year strategic plans, which means that they all have 15 to 30 year specific visions for where they're headed, specific destination. And a few years ago, as I said, I kind of woke up and looked at Vision 2030 and said, you know what, there's a lot of parallels here. Now, there are some ways in which Vision 2030 could be— the implementation needs to be vastly improved, and it could learn from private sector examples. But I've been in enough sessions now to say, okay, I can see what's working and what's not working. I've seen success stories, fabulous success stories, miraculous outcomes, a little bit like the murder rate dropping, where things happen just because people are committed to the same thing at the same time on the same page. So the process of building, the 6 years, I suggest that Amando take a trip here to Jamaica and take a look at what's been happening here or what happened here. No, I would say that she shouldn't copy anything because, as I said, the effort here is not perfect, and maybe she should go to another country or two or three and pull out the parts that are working. But there is a formula here. For that, for developing national development plans that's been used by some 50 to 100 countries. I've only found one academic paper, or a couple, um, I'll drop them, I'll drop the links in the show notes, but they are very sort of rudimentary. They're not experts in strategic planning, um, and especially in long-term strategic planning, which is a different discipline than just putting together 5-year plans. But those book— those links are useful, and she should study those links, you know, read them for what they're worth. But I'm going to suggest that the US— if I be bold enough as a US citizen to suggest that the US engage in a similar activity. And I'm not just suggesting it for the hell of it. I'm gonna argue that without it, US power, US influence, the US way of life, the United States as an example, is doomed. As in, it's not gonna work out well. It's not gonna end well. So, boy, and I'm saying something dramatic and radical, and I might sound to you like, a hopeless liberal jam. Maybe not so hopeless, but definitely liberal. But consider the process, a process that the US could go through of first the consultation, the 6 years. I don't know how long it would take for a massive country like United States to come up with a single destination. No, as I say, single destination. If you're aware and you're familiar with US politics, you might immediately feel a sense of resignation and, um, might use the surrender, even some despair. May even get a little bit cynical and say, that's not gonna happen, France, you're not realistic, that's not— there's no way. But here's what I've noticed in the 60 companies I've worked with, and I noticed happened here in Jamaica, is that if you go out far enough, you actually run into common outcomes. So Amanda mentioned, in the Amanda case, I mentioned this just briefly, that when she worked with her neighborhood watch, uh, organization, her neighborhood association Essentially, there's vast disagreement over what to do next week and next month and even in the next 6 months. But if you go out far enough into the future, what you find is commonality, overlap, and alignment. Now, you may not— you may listen to me and you may say, there's no way. No way, Francis. There's no— that does not— it doesn't work that way. There's no way the United States or America with its polarization could go out far enough to realize the kind of similarities I'm talking about. And I can only tell you from firsthand experience that this is what happens. Something curious happens when you go out far enough is that every— the participants who are engaged in the exercise stop thinking about themselves because they're going to be dead. They would have passed on. So you're thinking about the world that they want for their offspring. And what do they want for them? And I suggest that they want great things. All citizens of their countries, all of countries want great things for their children and for future generations. And when asked, there is way more commonality out there for the future than there is for the present. So as you go to create a Vision 2030, what you discover is how similar people are, that given that they're human beings, and I'm not talking about you know, psychopaths and people who are mentally, you know, mentally challenged. I'm not talking about the extreme. It's not about getting everybody to think the same way, but it is about discovering where a critical mass are committed to the same things and have more in common than they do differences. Well, the difference is always are always sort of in your face because the differences are occurring in the short term. But in the long term, for USA 2060, an exercise like the kind that Amanda is considering may uncover that there is a hell of a lot of agreement around the destination. So if you were to engage in this process of— and it's a process of giving and taking. It's a process of negotiation. You can engage large groups at the very beginning and get everyone thinking about this. But eventually it comes down to a few, a small, smaller number of people. And in companies that we work with, it's a small number of people, of 20 people. Who actually define what this endpoint would look like. And that endpoint, you know, if you think about the common things people want, people want a fair society. People, we don't want a high murder rate. People want, you know, fair elections. That there's a huge commonality around these things. But in the US, as in Jamaica before Vision 2030, when these things are not laid out explicitly and not described in detail, and there's no date with respect to when the country is trying to accomplish them by, then it sort of remains in the realm of vague visioning. And for the purposes that I'm talking about, which is long-term strategic planning, vague visioning may come way after the fact, after the long-term specific vision and the strategy are put in place. Then you can put a headline on it. But in today's world, just having a headline with nothing underneath it is a bit like reading an article and it's clickbait. You, you clicked on it for the clickbait. And as you scroll down, there's nothing, there's literally nothing below the headline. And that doesn't work in today's world. People want specifics. So getting enough people together in the right formats to drive to one destination for the United States may sound impossible given the hostility that exists today and the vitriol. But I suggest that it's not, that the US is not exceptional in this regard. And in fact, the little bit that I've read and the little bit I've heard of, and I'm sort of seeing mentions of a future that all Americans could get behind. They're not strong signals by any means, but these are small elements. But there does need to be a process to go from where the US is now, which is that there are a few people who are kind of talking about this, to where there's a process to follow that will produce a document which has a year on it, which has specifics on it, which can then be backcast to the present. So funny things happen when people who are opposed in the short term commit to the same thing in the long term and engage in some honest backcasting from the specifics of 2060, and you bring 2060 back to today. Interesting things happen when people engage in that process, which is that we're no longer trying to force or today agenda. We're not trying to solve even today problems. Instead, we're trying to work from the future. In other words, future back as opposed to present forward, which is one of the phrases from a book I read. I can't quite remember the name, but I'll drop it in the show notes. Um, but that mindset allows you to plan from the future back to the present. And because it's a different mindset and because there are hard trade-offs to make, the process doesn't have the defensiveness, the anger, the unhappiness that you find when you're trying to fix today's problems going forward. So I can't underestimate this enough. And I can only tell you that I see it over and over again in the strategic planning retreats that I lead. I engineer it in that I make it happen on purpose. But I suggest that it offers a glimmer of hope that if you've not engaged in a process like this before, I can only describe to you and sort of say, trust me in a way, or go try it yourself first if you don't wanna trust me. And that your knowledge of the present, the present forward mindset, is not the mindset that you use to create a long-term vision and a long-term strategy. And that mindset has to be sort of set aside. The present forward mindset needs to be set aside to allow the future back mindset to drive the process. So it's perfectly normal and natural to believe that what I'm saying is not going to work. That if all you really know is present forward, this future back business of which I speak and the mindset are figments of my imagination. I just have it wrong. It's perfectly normal to think that because that's the thinking that happens with the present forward mindset. Futureback mindset, however, and as I said, I can only point to what I've seen firsthand and secondhand, is that it works in a different way. It has a rigor to it that is its own rigor. There's a logic that has its own logic. It has a social dynamic among those who are doing the planning that has its own dynamic among those who— it causes them to make trade-offs and trade-off decisions and hard decisions because the context of the hard decision is not what's happened in the past or what's happening today. The context of the hard decision is the future that we're trying to create together. That's very different. So in a way, this echoes the process that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were created from because they were creating a future, a non-specific future in terms of its date for a country. But some of the vibe is quite similar. The difference is that in today's world, a vision for 2060 needs to be very specific. It needs to have a very strategic, very specific strategic plan to accomplish it. It needs support from more than just any single party in terms of the world, the US and its political system. It needs multiple stakeholder support and to get that, to complete the entire process and to report the future and the strategy to accomplish it back to 350 million people is its own process. In that sense, you know, what we've done here in Jamaica won't necessarily scale because we are a much smaller level than 350 million. However, I stand beside the principles of what I'm describing, and I would go out on a limb and say, repeat what I said before, that there is no future There's no future that the US can stumble into. I think that's what the big learning is from Trump 2.0, that there's not a future to stumble into just because the United States has been the greatest democracy, the greatest economy, the greatest— that these things don't mean that they'll continue, that the continuity that's now been disrupted at scale won't ever return in its old incarnation. So in other words, if the Democrats were to win the next election, imagine the disaster if their mantra were to return the country to 2023, 2024. Sorry. What if they came in and said, we want to take everything back? So as I'm saying it, you're probably saying, we can't go back. There is no just going back and peeling back things to the way they were. And I agree. Instead, there needs to be a fresh destination. And I'm not talking about a fresh destination for a party or a particular leadership. It needs to be a fresh destination for the country. And anything short of that will just be more of the same. In other words, it'll fail. So I'm alarmist, maybe, but without a joined-up future for the United States that critical mass can get behind, it won't unleash the next sort of American millennium or the next phase of America's growth and success. It won't unleash the contribution that America can make to the rest of the world. It won't create a world that relies on America the way it used to, relies on the biggest economy, the, you know, massive player, uh, uh, to be there in the corner providing a bedrock for the world to operate, that these things are in danger. So I'm not here to tell you that these things are easy. I, I started off by saying this is a wicked problem. This is a wicked problem of wicked problems. But hopefully, as you're hearing this, you could be like Amanda and you could actually find a place to contribute to what I'm calling for, to lend your voice to those who are influential, those who are in positions of leadership, those who have resources, those who have energy and youth, those who are creative, that maybe what America needs is a very specific vision of its own and a strategy to accomplish it, and therefore needs a process to follow to make that real. Maybe. So as I sign out, let me invite you to drop me a question at, or a comment, private comment or open comment at longtermstrategy.info. Uh, you can also send me a private message if you go to that same website, my website, and you'll see a link to send me a message if you want to engage me any further on this, I am available. This is of not just importance to one country. As you know, this is a potential turning point for our planet, for the people of our world. So on that significant note, I invite you to keep listening so I can tell you about the next episode that's coming up here at the Long Term Strategy Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast. Thanks for listening. And hold on, let me, let me tell you some more in just a few minutes. And here's a clip from our next episode with Lisa Carlin.

Absolutely. One of the biggest issues I see is that change management does not get its seat at the table. Regularly. And in one case in particular where I just saw this, I walked into the situation where the project was just not, you know, it was not getting traction and the change manager was superb, but she just wasn't invited to the key meetings. People didn't understand change management and it made it very difficult to get true value out of this amazing person who was just so skilled. And she could have seen all the writing on the wall and, you know, how to navigate the stakeholders, but she was not consulted properly.

And if you like the work we are doing, feel free to follow us at our website strategyconf.fwconsulting.com. Or like or leave a comment on one of the popular podcast apps such as Stitcher or iTunes. This is Francis Wade, and I'm signing out from the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategic Planning Podcast. See you later.