"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there," the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Alice in Wonderland. In other words, determine where you are going and create a map to get there.

Because we are powerless, most of us look at what is happening in the world and hope things will get better. But hope is not a strategy. So if we want to make a Citizen-led Future a reality we need to do some strategic thinking here.

Rather than start from where we are and stare across the abyss at an undefined goal, we start where we want to end up and work backwards. I call it walking back from the future.

Only then can we work forwards and create the path.

There are 4 steps:

1. Create a Vision of a Desired Future. What do we want the world to look like in, say, 2040?
2. Walk back from the future to the present asking "What has to happen for that to be true?
3. Determine the jobs that have to be done to manifest each of those steps
4. Create the specific Roadmap to do the jobs.

Here goes.

1 Vision of a Desired Future in 2040

Let's go with "A World of Peace, Opportunity and Wellbeing for all, created by Citizen Leadership".

You may argue that 14 years to replace Strongman Leadership is too optimistic. Fair enough but I'm confident that once Citizen-led Leadership is adopted that it will quickly spread throughout the world.

2 Walk Back from the Desired Future

The Walk Back is not easy. It requires deep thought especially as the current proponents of Strongman Leadership have no incentive to change things.

Let's go through this step by step starting at the red arrow.

• Our Vision will only emerge if a critical mass of leaders embrace it.
  That is, there is a general recognition that POW4all is a much better way for humanity to thrive than the constant conflict created by Strongman Leadership.
  That will only happen if:
• These 3 conditions occur:
  • a critical mass of citizens advocate for POW4all. This is consistent pressure from below from GenR.
  • Governance Systems/rules are reinvented to align with POW4all. Without systems change, nothing will happen.
  • New incentives are incorporated into thos systems changes so that it is riskier politically to not align with POW4all. As we move closer to 2040 and Citizen Leadership becomes the norm, it will be easy for leaders to align.
    Those 3 conditions will occur only if :
• Citizens are organized & actively reinvent the rules to create the alignment and incentives.
  Yes, we've got to do it. As Martin Luther King said, "Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war." Let's face it, in 2026, those who love war are well organized, if not always effective.
  We can do that only if:
• Citizens have the capabilities and resources to do it.
  We have to know how to do it en masse and have the money and technology to do. None of this exists now. This means that GenR has to be creative in many areas: systems design, technology, financing and not least of all, keeping Citizen-lead Leadership top of mind.
  That can only be achieved if:
• Citizens are willing to take action NOW to do what’s necessary to achieve POW4all.
  Yes, we citizens, GenR, have to embark on this even though the outcome is unknown: explore, create and build. Because if we don't do it, nobody will.
  For people to embark:
• 4 things need to be in place:
  • 1. Citizens have desire for a better future - in place, millions of people worldwide are clamouring for systems change
  • 2. There is clarity - of vision (POW) and a roadmap to get there - in place, right here
  • 3. Incentives to take action are large; risks and costs are small - in place, as this post articulates in a minute
  • 4. There is new energy - from fear to enthusiasm - this will grow as people realize they are on the leading edge of creating the citizen-led future.

After walking back from the future, we have got a picture of 6 things that have to happen before we get to POW4all. Let's turn that into Jobs To Be Done.

3 Jobs to be done

Jobs To Be Done flow from the "only happen if" thoughts. They are concepts from which we can derive more specific alternatives to make the roadmap.

As such, they should be read with a prefix of "Find a way to..."

We have 6 jobs to do, starting now:

1. Find a way to help people see and decide that the Citizen-led Future and POW4all is possible
2. Find a way to create a critical mass for, and launch, a cooperative venture
3. Find a way to co-create the infrastructure necessary to enable reinvention at scale
4. Find a way to actually reinvent the rules/governance systems in the real world
5. Find a way to implement those reinvented systems in the real world
6. Find a way to reinvent leadership in the real world.

So the recurring themes are: a critical mass of people who reinvent systems and then lead the way to POW4all. Presto: the Citizen-led Future. If we can turn those jobs into a Roadmap.

4 The Roadmap

The Roadmap boils those jobs down to specific programs:

1. Job 1 is accomplished (hopefully!) by this website
2. Job 2 is accomplished by you taking action to join the GenR Leaders Center Coop (GLCC), the legal entity that you, as a Founding Member own.
3. GenR Rising is the program where we get ready to reinvent systems, implement them, reinvent leadership and build a sustainable business.
4. The next phase is called Citizen-led Democracy (CLD) where the actual reinvention of governance systems by citizens is done on the reinvention platform created within GenR Rising and owned by GLCC (you). CLD projects are also managed by GLCC.
5. The implementation of the reinvented systems are likely to be the longest and most difficult part of the process. Most governance systems are Party-based and Citizen-led systems do not fit easily into existing parties. But they would fit into a new global and local party - the Reinvention Party (RP) - that aligns directly with the new systems and POW4all.
6. Reinventing leadership is done in two ways; through the RPs and through the Peace Leadership programs offered by GenR Rising.

At the risk of stating the obvious, there's lot here. The journey is long. But if it was easy, a Citizen-led world would be in place. We would already have peace, opportunity and wellbeing for all. But we don't, so we have to create it...

Momentum

Lastly, you can also equate the above to momentum. As we journey along we gain momentum - from individual, to community, to national to a global. You can equate this to moving from potential to possible, probable, inevitable and finally to reality.

You can download all the phases in one map here:

Imagine

Take a second and reflect how you want to spend the rest of your life... in freedom or fear? Look around you at what is happening. Are leaders talking freedom or spreading fear?

Imagine having the knowledge, skills and means to live in a world where we have peace, opportunity and wellbeing because you owned your power, helped reinvent democracy and deliberately led the world to that place.

In other words, imagine living a bigger life than you have ever imagined before. 

One More Thing

We started this long post with a quote: "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there," the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Alice in Wonderland.

George Harrison was inspired by this quote to write Any Road, his final single, released posthumously and for which he was nominated for a Best male Pop Vocal Performance Grammy.

It's a nice whimsical way to end a long, somewhat involved, post.

Now you've got the Roadmap

Are you ready to leave Strongman Leadership behind and bring a Citizen-led Future into reality?