The Power of Pre-emptive Strategic Planning

As a company leader invested in the future of your enterprise, it can be frustrating to see others content with handling issues only when they arise. How can you instill a culture of forward-thinking in your organization?

In many local organizations, strategic planning is often viewed as a luxury—an activity to be deferred until more stable times, when there’s ample time and money. For others, it’s merely a compliance exercise. Large companies and governments may conduct planning sessions just to meet requirements, with little emphasis on meaningful strategy.

In both scenarios, strategic planning is often deprioritized. The COVID-19 pandemic has further entrenched this mindset, turning strategy into a low-priority, habitual afterthought in the C-Suite. However, if you’re ready to break free from this mindset, consider adopting the concept of Threat Zones.

Defining Your Organization’s Threat Zones

A Threat Zone is a period, spanning several months or years, during which multiple threats converge. Individually, these threats might seem manageable, but together, they can create a perfect storm.

For example, a hurricane like Beryl in 2024 requires specific conditions: warm ocean waters, low vertical wind shear, high humidity, proximity to the equator, a weather disturbance, and atmospheric instability. Individually, these elements are harmless, but together, they can be catastrophic.

Similarly, a Threat Zone in an organization requires relatively innocuous elements, yet their combination can be transformative, but in the good way. Unlike hurricanes, they can also offer opportunities.

Consider Fujifilm and Kodak, which had similar revenues in 2000. However, Fuji recognized the Threat Zone emerging in the film industry, while Kodak did not. Today, Fuji’s revenue is 20 times that of its former competitor.

You might think your organization is immune to Threat Zones, but that’s a dangerous assumption. In my August 4th, 2024 Gleaner column, I highlighted the fact that even government agencies can be defunded and disbanded if they fall into this trap.

Take a lesson from Andy Grove, former Chairman of Intel. His book, “Only the Paranoid Survive”, details how Intel nearly went bankrupt in the 1980s due to a Threat Zone. Fortunately, a group of middle managers anticipated the threat and prepared the company for a switch from memory chips to microprocessors, despite Grove’s public stance.

How Can Your C-Suite Develop Foresight?

Threat Zones can be internal or external. Internal threats might include product-market fit, succession planning, and employee engagement, while external threats could involve climate change, government regulation, or inflation.

However, there’s no universal list. Your leadership team must identify which Threat Zones are relevant to your organization. Even if you bring in consultants, their help is limited; only your C-Suite can accurately determine your Threat Zones and when they might arise.

This requires rapid consideration of:

– Current trends that, while weak, cover a wide range of causes. Many start with the PESTER framework—Political, Environmental, Social, Technological, Economic, and Regulatory—but also include competitors and substitutes.

– Past results indicating long-term deficiencies that previous leadership teams have ignored, leaving them for future C-Suites.

– Insights across financial, customer, operations, and human resources. Even with incomplete data, plans must be made.

This task is too complex for any outsider or single individual, no matter their intelligence. Only a cross-functional leadership team can effectively conduct this analysis.

Planning Around Threat Zones

It’s tempting to quickly break down Threat Zones into individual threats, but resist this urge. Instead, use long-term strategic planning tools to tackle each one as an entity.

After identifying and assessing the impact and timing of Threat Zones, select no more than five to focus on. These should represent the most significant dangers or opportunities.

When crafting your long-term vision for a specific year (e.g., 2050), start with a narrative that addresses these five zones. Only then should you translate the vision into measurable targets.

As you work backward from these 2050 metrics to the present, create projects that address each zone. Define each project to include immediate actions.

Now, you’ll be taking pre-emptive action with a strategic plan that is game-changing.

Ep 19 – Enduring the Messy Stages of Strategic Planning

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Your company is in the middle of a strategic planning project. Things are going according to plan but there are several competing schools of thought about the future of the organization.

In discussions, voices are being raised as competing ideas are shared. You are beginning to feel nervous because the opinions cannot be reconciled easily. Should you intervene or allow it to run its course, even though things are looking like a mess?

Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Chris Fox, as we tackle this wicked problem together.

I’m Francis Wade and welcome to the JumpLeap Long-Term Strategy Podcast.

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Ep 18 – What if your strategy document is missing actual strategic thinking?

Your company has a long history of putting together strategic plans. And you have diligently read them all in a search to understand the intentions of prior leaders.

But as you look them over you are concerned. There are lots of todo lists, action items, and budgets, but the underlying plan seems to lack something important – a strategy.

You can’t quite explain why this is the case, but you can tell when that intangible quality is missing. Perhaps, there should be a better way to tell than just raw instinct, but how?

Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Alexis Savkin, as we solve this wicked problem together.

 

I’m Francis Wade and welcome to the JumpLeap Long-Term Strategy Podcast – https://longtermstrategy.info

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit longtermstrategy.substack.com/subscribe

Three Horizons for Strategic Thinking: A Guide for Long-Term Planning Advocates

As a proponent of long-term thinking in your company, you’ve likely encountered resistance. You may feel isolated, struggling to articulate the value of strategic foresight to colleagues focused on immediate concerns. This guide aims to provide you with a framework to effectively communicate the importance of long-term strategic planning (LTSP) and engage others in this crucial mindset.

The Challenge of Long-Term Thinking

You’ve probably experienced this scenario: In a meeting, you highlight a future your colleagues can’t see. The potential long-term consequences seem obvious to you. Unfortunately, your team, preoccupied with urgent problems, lacks the energy to consider your strategic viewpoint. They opt for the quick satisfaction of immediate resolutions.

Afterwards, you realize that fundamental issues remain unaddressed. It feels like you’re only discussing surface-level solutions without questioning the underlying approach.

If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. Many forward-thinking professionals struggle to convey the importance of LTSP. But there’s a way to bridge this gap and bring others into long-term thinking: the Three Horizons Framework by Curry, Hodgson and Sharpe.

Horizon 1: Understanding the Decay of Current Offerings

Every organization provides value through its products or services. However, it’s crucial to recognize that these offerings have a limited lifespan. Each day brings you closer to the point where your current solutions become obsolete.

Consider the photography industry. Until the 2000s, companies like Kodak and Fuji thrived selling film. Today, the average consumer has no interest in this product.

This decay in demand is a universal truth in business, illustrated by the following curve:

The key question is: How long will your current strategic fit last?

As an LTSP advocate, you’ve likely considered this. Now, you have a visual representation to share with your colleagues, helping them grasp this concept more easily.

Horizon 3: Recognizing Future Opportunities

While managing current operations is crucial, it’s equally important to look for signs of future trends. These “faint signals” can be found in emerging technologies, evolving customer needs, new regulations, environmental changes, and various other areas.

By paying attention to these signals, your team can craft narratives about potential futures. This foresight defines the third horizon:

Many companies overlook these disruptors by failing to plan far enough ahead. As an LTSP proponent, you can encourage your team to do more than passively observe these changes. Instead, position your organization to influence and shape these future scenarios.

Horizon 2: Bridging Present and Future

To transition from current offerings to future opportunities, your organization needs a bridge – this is Horizon 2:

These are initiatives that may not represent your ultimate vision but serve as stepping stones towards it. Developing these transition strategies is best done in strategic planning retreats, where all departments can contribute their insights.

Integrating the Three Horizons

When effectively implemented, the Three Horizons Framework allows your organization to manage current operations, develop transition strategies, and prepare for future scenarios simultaneously:

This integrated approach demonstrates how long-term imperatives can and should inform immediate actions.

Conclusion: Empowering Long-Term Strategic Planning

By using the Three Horizons Framework, you now have a powerful tool to illustrate the importance of long-term thinking to your colleagues. This approach allows you to:

1. Visually represent the lifecycle of current offerings

2. Highlight the importance of future-focused initiatives

3. Demonstrate how to bridge present operations with future opportunities

4. Show how all these elements work together in a cohesive strategy

Remember, you’re not alone in advocating for LTSP. Many successful organizations embrace this approach, recognizing that preparation for the future is key to long-term success.

Use this framework to spark meaningful discussions about your company’s future. By doing so, you’re not just planning for tomorrow – you’re shaping it.

Ep 17 – How to Find Time for Strategic Planning

You are in charge of implementing your company’s new strategic plan. It includes some brilliant new ideas which should shake up your industry, and even introduce the world to a new category of products and services.

But you are a bit wary because prior strategic plans barely made it off the PowerPoint pages. They weren’t implemented due to a common complaint – no-one had the time.

You have every reason to be worried, but what should you do about the problem?

Tune into this episode to join me in tackling this wicked problem from two perspectives at once…task management and strategic planning.

I’m Francis Wade and welcome to the Task Management & Time Blocking Podcast and the JumpLeap Long-Term Strategy Podcast.

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Strategy for Jamaican Sports Federations

You love your national sport. Seeing the Jamaican (or West Indian) flag soar above a global stage fires you up. But you also see that in football and cricket, we’ve fallen as a country. Could it be related to a lack of long-term thinking?

When the West Indies men’s cricket team dominated the world in the 1980s and 90s, other countries envied them. They all tried to catch up, but Australia’s response was unique.

They decided to invest in youth cricket like never before. Why? They recognized a long-term problem. Quick fixes wouldn’t solve it permanently.

Fast forward a decade, and their success since then shows their planning at work. While we in the West Indies struggle to find talent, revive interest, and fix governance problems, Australian dominance continues.

Simply put, they built a system to win international cricket.

Meanwhile, the West Indies continues to fail, except for occasional successes. We get lucky sometimes and win, but those wins happen despite our system, not because of it.

I’m not criticizing our setup; I’m not an expert. But if we learn from Australia’s long-term focus, can we apply it to our national football team?

We Jamaicans got lucky and competed in the World Cup once, but a sustainable system is still missing there. More importantly, is there something our sporting federations can do differently in their planning? Here are three ideas if you’re part of one.

1. Pick a Target Year and Visualize

First, set a planning horizon 10-30 years ahead, and name it your Target Year. Be careful; picking too close or too far has downsides.

If you pick a year too close, it becomes selfish. You’ll be pushing aside future generations. Also, if you’re too aggressive with your short-term goals, others won’t believe you. As a result, they won’t take action.

On the other hand, if you pick a year too far away, your plan could become irrelevant as soon as its developed. There won’t be enough urgency for stakeholders to respond.

But the key is not just choosing the right year. The idea is to commit to milestones between now and your target date. These milestones should create the right mindset on a large scale. They should inspire people of all ages to make the sacrifices needed for world-class performance.

After setting a Target Year, create a vivid vision or end-game. This isn’t just a vague “vision statement” but a numeric, measurable list of outcomes. Together, they describe your desired future.

Within this space, generate up to three unique but alternative visions. Then, choose one.

Many organizations make a big mistake by stopping here.

2. Strategize Backwards

To connect your vision to reality, you need to backcast, or plan backward from your desired future to the present. As you do, you’ll correct two common anomalies.

The first anomaly is that some of your initial, visionary outcomes are probably unrealistic, and some will be overly ambitious.

The second anomaly is when the Target Year itself has to change to make the plan work.

Don’t remove these anomalies randomly. Your team needs to find a careful balance between aspirations and reality. As such, this is a task for insiders and can’t be outsourced.

If your team fails to achieve this balance, you’ll lose fan support. For example, if they sense that the planning team said yes to too many things without making tough choices, they may turn away.

Your plan needs to make logical sense.

3. Build Social Support

Sporting federations need widespread fan support, but the old way of “selling” your plan to people doesn’t work anymore.

Instead, the modern approach is to involve fans in the process from the beginning. But this doesn’t mean filling a room with hundreds at every meeting.

The key is to incorporate both divergent and convergent activities in your schedule.

Divergent activities are invitations to gather more input. They benefit from broad participation.

However, convergent activities involve making tough decisions using that same input. This is a consolidation step where you summarize and draw conclusions.

Use both in a sort of dance, and you’ll bring your fans into your long-term thinking and the planning needed to achieve success in your sport.

Game-Changing: Thinking Big and Going Long

Thinking Big and Going Long

As a corporate or national leader, you’re deeply concerned about the future of your enterprise or country. But you may notice something is missing—a sense of shared hope and engagement. You ask yourself, “Why?”

The last time many Jamaicans felt truly hopeful about the future was around 1962, just before independence. I wasn’t born then, but elders recall the power of that moment: a future brimming with promise.

Before independence, leaders like Marcus Garvey, Sam Sharpe, and Norman Manley courageously articulated a vision for Jamaica. They took these stands, despite knowing they wouldn’t see the outcomes in their lifetime, or even in the coming decades. We revere them because they made unselfish sacrifices for the greater good, even when the odds were against them.

Today, we long for leaders with similar clarity and conviction—those not swayed by greed, political gain, or self-interest. Instead, we’ve grown accustomed to pointing fingers; for many, leadership has become synonymous with corruption. Ironically, however, even flawed leaders can still “think big and go long.” They can look to our National Heroes as models. So, where can they start?

Understanding What Really Motivates People

Humans are creatures of imagination, and our motivation is deeply influenced by our vision of the future. This imagined future shapes our experience both now and in the long run.

Take, for example, the motivation of new employees. Initially, they’re excited. Over time, however, as they encounter challenges and setbacks, their enthusiasm fades. In environments that are merely transactional—where work is treated as nothing more than an exchange for money—this disillusionment runs deep.

Today’s younger employees, especially Gen Z, are making it clear: “That’s not enough.” They demand engagement that’s driven by purpose. To meet these expectations, leaders must do two things: think big and go long.

Thinking Big and Going Long

Most leaders don’t genuinely think big or long. They may talk about game-changing goals, but they only want results within the fiscal year, their CEO term, or before the next IPO or election. In the past, this approach might have worked.

But today, employees, customers, and citizens are quick to recognize shallow promises. In a world flooded with “Buy Now!” messages, people have learned to ignore hollow pitches and easy promises. Leaders who try to “sell” people on short-term impossibilities come across as self-serving, and the result is widespread contempt.

The essential truth? “Thinking big” requires “going long” at the same time. For example, Richard Williams developed a 25-year tennis plan for his daughters, Venus and Serena, long before they were born. GraceKennedy did something similar with its 2020 Vision.

Contrast this with the cautionary tales on the CompanyMan YouTube channel, where the creator explores the decline of companies like K-Mart and Nokia. Each story illustrates the dangers of short-term thinking—loss of market share, plummeting shareholder value, and mass layoffs.

These same mistakes happen on a national scale as well. Right now, around 30-40 national plans worldwide—like Vision 2030 Jamaica and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals—are nearing their deadlines, and many are off track.

However, modern employees want more than just their leaders’ long-term thinking and big goals.

Freeing People from Past Disappointments

You may notice that even when there’s good news, some employees stay stuck in cynicism. Previous disappointments have hardened their outlook, making it difficult for them to feel optimistic.

One way to address this is through radical truth-telling. For example, I visited South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in the 1990s. The broadcasted testimonies were harrowing, recounting torture and murder. I could only watch in short bursts.

But the principle was powerful. Truth-telling can be liberating. In our case, the forward of Vision 2030 Jamaica, written 15 years ago, put it bluntly:

> “Partly due to our neglect of long-term issues, our nation has suffered from a number of inadequacies… Previous planning efforts floundered… Jamaicans have expressed a clear wish to break out of this vicious cycle of low performance and build a quality society.”

When organizations or nations engage in these difficult, honest conversations, they show that a troubled past doesn’t have to define the future. It allows employees and citizens alike to hope—and ultimately frees them to think big and go long once again.

Reversing Neglect: The Case of Vale Royal and Vision 2030 Jamaica

Your organization has crafted a vision for the future, winning the approval of a wide array of stakeholders. But how do you keep that momentum alive beyond the initial excitement and actually deliver results?

Jamaica is known for its creativity, especially when it comes to innovation. We excel at producing world-class prototypes and ideas.

However, that reputation also highlights a significant gap: a lack of emphasis on follow-through and upkeep. There’s an old saying: hire a Jamaican for innovation, a Trinidadian to launch it with flair, and a Bajan to handle the day-to-day operations.

Consider Vale Royal as an example. Recently, a viral internet post depicted the state of this historic 1694 property, once the official residence of past Prime Ministers. Despite the Jamaican coat of arms adorning it, the image revealed a dilapidated building.

The reaction was swift and unanimous: shock and disappointment. This was hardly a proud moment for the nation. Clearly, some part of the government process had failed, leaving an eyesore in its wake. The only consolation? The neglected building is set back from the road, slightly out of public view.

What lessons can this teach us about managing grand aspirations like Vision 2030 Jamaica, and how can you apply these insights to ensure your organization’s vision doesn’t face the same fate?

Visions Are Hard to Maintain

Unlike physical objects, a vision is built from fragments of imagination. While it’s often captured in written form, what truly matters is the resonance it finds within people.

A compelling vision takes root in the hearts and minds of those who see themselves in it. It inspires them, evoking strong emotions and a shared sense of purpose toward a future they want to make real.

Yet, creating a tangible product is far easier than inspiring others to envision a brighter future. Those who do this effectively—figures like Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela—are rightfully revered.

Sustaining a vision over time is even harder than maintaining a physical structure. Today, both Vale Royal and Vision 2030 Jamaica are in need of revitalization. Though their restoration processes would be different, neither is beyond hope.

Now, think of your own organization. Are stakeholders genuinely motivated by your vision? Has its impact faded? Can you rekindle the energy it once generated?

Ordinary Efforts Won’t Achieve Extraordinary Visions

Perhaps a common oversight by those managing both Vale Royal and Vision 2030 Jamaica was the assumption that regular, routine efforts could somehow produce remarkable, transformative outcomes.

This isn’t just a government issue; the same challenge exists in any organization. Some employees are skilled at keeping day-to-day operations steady. As author Robert Pirsig (in *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*) puts it, they preserve “static quality.” They are essential—but they are not visionaries.

For breakthrough change, you need people who drive “dynamic quality,” those who push for improvement and innovation.

Pirsig argues that both roles are essential, but they must be balanced. A possible misstep with Vision 2030 Jamaica was the reliance on government staff focused on “static quality” to also execute and govern a forward-looking vision.

As a result, while Jamaica started Vision 2030 with momentum, the progress has slowed. To avoid this pitfall, your organization must institutionalize the management and execution of its vision, creating a structure that ensures enduring commitment.

This approach, though it may seem new, draws on a proven success story.

Introducing a Vision-Oriented Oversight Committee

Jamaica’s significant reduction in its debt-to-GDP ratio has been celebrated worldwide. This accomplishment was thanks to a bipartisan, long-term effort that drew upon disciplined oversight from the private sector, trade unions, and civil society.

What if your organization established a similar framework—a “Vision-Oriented Oversight Committee” (VPOC)? This committee would serve as a vision-focused equivalent to Jamaica’s Economic Programme Oversight Committee (EPOC), actively balancing both static and dynamic qualities to ensure sustained progress. In some cases, a board could serve this function.

This idea could be the key to Vision 2030 Jamaica’s success. Without a VPOC, the likelihood of achieving Jamaica’s aspiration to become “the place of choice” may continue to diminish over the next six years, potentially jeopardizing one of our most ambitious goals since independence.

Ep 16.5 Is There Actually a Valid “Just Keep Things Going” Strategy?

Your organization is about to conduct its annual strategic planning process. From all indications, this will be another “business as usual” effort, intended to check the box. The time horizon, after all, will only extend for four years, maximum.

No-one expects anything out of the ordinary to emerge from it – this is a ritual in which prior performance is improved on by a few percentage points.

But are expectations too low? And if this to be the norm each year, should a plan require more than just a single person making simple edits?

Is there a problem with this approach?

Tune into this episode to join me in tackling this wicked problem. Enjoy this complimentary episode of the podcast.

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This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit longtermstrategy.substack.com/subscribe

Should Jamaican Citizens Abandon Their Vision of 2030?

As a Jamaican employed in an organisation, you are worried about the future of our nation. It appears as if our country is stumbling along, barely keeping its head above water.

At the same time, you are aware of the power of a corporate vision. Why hasn’t someone done one for our 2.8 million people on the island, and the other 2+ million in the Diaspora?

The good news is that something is already in place in the form of Vision 2030. But why isn’t it changing your everyday experience?

The truth is that we need help. The two main things Jamaicans care most about – economy and crime – seem not to have progressed for decades. Instead, we want the hyper-growth of Trinidad-2004 and Guyana-2023. Or maybe even the steady high performance of the Bahamas.

Or perhaps more importantly, we envy the low crime rates of Barbados or Cayman (formerly a Jamaican protectorate.) At some point, we led all these countries in these areas.

Today, we are working hard not to slip into the same zone as Haiti.

If our leading companies can accomplish so much long-term success, why can’t our country, we wonder? While a direct comparison is unfair, maybe there are a few things we can learn from best practices accepted in your organisation.

A Joined Up, Far-Away Future

A “joined-up” future is one that lots of stakeholders contribute to creating. In a company, it means engaging the board, executives, staff, customers, suppliers, regulators, local communities and more.

Shouldn’t our country do the same?

Based on my experience and queries of colleagues outside government…we don’t know that we already have a joined-up faraway future…at least on paper. In fact, the process used to create Vision 2030 Jamaica from 2003-9 is a world-class model. As such, I have shared it at in-person and online strategy conferences as a case study.

Perhaps you recognise the summary statement: “the place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business.” In times gone, it was the tagline of speeches given by the Governor General, Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and many others.

But I looked over the recent Budget Debate notes. I struggled to find much of a mention. A Google search didn’t help. Here are a few ways business people at all levels could intervene now to prevent what former leaders of our country seem to be telling us…this is too important to allow it to be eaten up in regular chakka-chakka.

Why the urgency?

With six or so years remaining until we cross the finish line in 2030, we can’t afford to waste a single moment in mid-race. Remember when Miller-Uibo glanced up at the screen and lost her lead in the 400m final of the 2017 World Championships? We are likely to stumble into defeat also as a nation, unless we pay attention to the following.

A Divisive Election – You and I watch the bitter combat underway in the USA. It appears that cooperation towards common goals is impossible. Within a year, our own political parties will try to win the next election by emphasising their differences. This is natural. But it’s the opposite of the intent of Vision 2030 Jamaica. Just imagine if the board of your company were divided into opposing camps. Let’s intervene so that their attention remains on what is most important.

Continuous Inspiration – Your ability to recite our National Pledge and Anthem were picked up as a child. We could elevate Vision 2030 Jamaica to that level of importance, starting with the Forward by Dr. Wesley Hughes, which states in part:

“Today, our children, from the tiny boy in Aboukir, St. Ann, to the teenage girl in Cave, Westmoreland, have access to technologies that were once considered science fiction. They seek opportunities to realise their full potential. This Plan (vision) is to ensure that, as a society, we do not fail them. “

Updated Business-like Measures – How can we know the progress we have made from 2009-2023? Are the measurable results listed in the document beyond reach? Do we deserve an A-? or a D+?

How about fresh, intuitive measures of success which tell us whether or not Jamaica is becoming “the place of choice”? Let’s measure the length of lines outside the US and Canadian Embassies for those seeking permanent residency and how they are growing or shrinking.

Wheeling and Coming Again – Companies have no problem resetting fresh objectives when the old ones no longer do the job. In business, a strategy that is not working is replaced as soon as it’s found to be lacking.

We can do the same for Vision 2030 Jamaica to keep it relevant. This is the beauty of long-term strategic planning.

An honest read of the original document reveals that certain assumptions about the government’s capacity to lead the effort were unquestioned. Today, after over a decade of effort, we have learned much. For example, it’s hard to argue that the planning done in 2009 was enough.

In summary, while we once led the world in long-term national planning, we aren’t doing the same in the more difficult world of national strategizing and execution. But there’s time.

As the clock ticks down to 2030, things are likely to become more awkward for all of us. As you may imagine, the human tendency is to avoid the issue entirely, hoping it goes away.

That may yet happen. But if we don’t confront the gaps in our initial attempt to create a joined-up, faraway vision, we’ll block our citizens from ever believing in a national vision again.

In fact, it would be better if it were declared null and void, than ignored. At least that would have some integrity and enable us to move on to a better national vision, lessons earned.

Better National Strategic Planning

And that is perhaps the biggest lesson for all concerned. We Jamaicans say that we are great starters, but poor finishers. In other words, we know how to kick things off. But when the going gets tough, we aren’t strong at bringing them to fruition.

Said differently, we don’t know how to keep promises just because we made them.

The point here is that Vision 2030, with some five to six years remaining, puts us in an awkward spot. But that’s a lie. We have put ourselves in an awkward spot.

At some point, we were strong in envisioning great things. Like a company who creates BHAGs, our executive team gave its sacred honour to accomplish a great thing, like the framers of the Declaration of Independence.

However, we haven’t put in place mechanisms sufficient to rescue our current situation. At this rate, we won’t be closer to being a “place of choice” than we were in 2009.

In a company, it’s easier to find individuals or a team of leaders who may hold themselves accountable for a game-changing result. Often, the metrics are clear.

Unfortunately, no such clarity exists around Vision 2030. And given our impending election fever, it may not come from politicians. Instead, it’s time for business to step up and bring sound strategic planning to the accomplishment of the most important outcomes of our national lifetimes.

Let’s inspire each other to intervene so we can have what we already know we want. It won’t happen any other way.