Competing for Freedom
Uniting Values, Vision, and Capability in a Contested World
“Strategic competition demands more than power — it requires coherence between purpose, policy, and people.”
The Strategic Imperative
- In this divided and interdependent world, strategic competition is not a choice. It is the necessary response to an age where autocracies weaponize interdependence and democracies must re-harness the strength of principled cooperation and collective innovation.
- Strategic competition has shifted — it is no longer a contest of military might alone. It is now a multidimensional race across technology, economics, governance, infrastructure, and trust.
- Freedom does not prevail by default. It wins when it delivers — and when it competes with clarity, purpose, and unity.
- To translate that coherence into capability, democracies need frameworks that capture how free nations can compete — and win — together.
Frameworks for Strategic Coherence
- Traditional models like DIME—Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic—served an era when American power could be projected from a stable, dominant core.
- But power today is dynamic, distributed, and contested. To succeed, democracies must generate strength, not just apply it; sustain it, not merely display it; and align it, not simply amass it.
- That is why Mark Kennedy developed three integrated frameworks for 360° strategic coherence:
🔹 GRIPS: The Five Faces of Power
- GRIPS identifies five interdependent domains that nations and institutions must develop and align to sustain strategic advantage:
- A strategic blueprint for building and integrating long-term national strength:
- Governance, Resilience, Innovation, Perception, Security
- GRIPS goes beyond DIME, capturing the internal systems and values that determine a nation’s ability to compete and lead.
🔹 PIVOT: Diagnosing Strategic Posture
- If GRIPS reveals what must be built and aligned, PIVOT helps institutions assess how well-positioned they are to compete and adapt.
- PIVOT introduces five dimensions of diagnostic insight:
- 🟦 Presence – Where you operate, source, and influence
- 🟩 Institutional Navigation – How effectively you shape and respond to regulatory environments
- 🟨 Value Structure - The strength and flexibility of your financial model
- 🟧 Operational Technology – The sovereignty and scalability of your digital and industrial infrastructure
- 🟥 Trust – Your credibility with key stakeholders and shapeholders
- While GRIPS defines capacity, PIVOT reveals whether you need to pivot—and how—with strategic clarity.
🔹 ALIGN: Closing the Strategy–Execution Gap
- Mind the Gap is a call to expose and address the hidden fractures between capabilities—before they erode credibility, cohesion, or control.
- Gaps often emerge:
- Between pillars – Innovation outpaces governance
- Across institutions – Private-sector progress is disconnected from public purpose
- Across alliances – Infrastructure and digital standards are uneven or uncoordinated
- Between ambition and execution – Narrative goals are disconnected from the policies, budgets, and systems needed to achieve them
- Closing these seams requires discipline — a framework that operationalizes coherence. That is the purpose of ALIGN, a strategic discipline for turning ambition into execution.
- The Five Elements of ALIGN:
- 🟦 A — Audit for Cross-Domain Consistency
- 🟩 L — Link Vision to Execution Systems
- 🟨 I — Integrate Across Institutions and Sectors
- 🟧 G — Gap-Test with Strategic Stress Scenarios
- 🟥 N — Narrow Focus to What Builds Trust and Advantage
- Whether applied to national strategy, corporate transformation, or alliance modernization, ALIGN ensures that priorities set by GRIPS and posture revealed by PIVOT are converted into performance.
The Path Forward
- Strategic coherence is no longer a luxury — it is a necessity.
- In a world where threats are hybrid and power interdependent, leadership must do more than manage silos.
- It must align them.
- That means governing with integrity that earns public trust.
- It means innovating at the speed of change while protecting what matters most.
- It means forging alliances that are not just symbolic — but synchronized.
- The path forward lies not in more programs, but in smarter alignment.
- Not in louder rhetoric, but in stronger trust.
- Not just in leading — but in leading with clarity, connection, and courage.
- Together, GRIPS, PIVOT, and ALIGN offer a 360° approach to strategic coherence — diagnosing capacity, refining posture, and ensuring execution.
- In competing for freedom, coherence is how democracies turn principle into power.
🎤 Related Keynotes
- The following keynotes offer deeper application of these frameworks across global, institutional, and economic dimensions: