How to Think Strategically

APPENDIX C

Manifesto for Strategic Thinking

A manifesto is a person’s or group’s public expression of intentions, motives, and reasoning. An example is the Agile Manifesto published by a group of software developers who were seeking better ways for developing software. The Agile Manifesto is a bland statement of values: for example, “we value working software over documentation.”

I believe that radical manifestos are of most interest and usefulness. Two well-known examples of radical manifestos are the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” These manifestos are radical in the sense that they reject the values of powerful and elite groups. In this book, I’ve identified the dominance of operational ...