A Institute Member writes:

My biggest struggle is using Climate. My own prejudice gets in the way. I really hate it when I see any “sales” pitch that applies pressure to “buy now” because the sky is falling. Even when it’s true, I hate to see it used to influence or manipulate me. Therefore, I tend to soften the Climate and avoid any kind of buy now approach.

Though Climate is often justifiably an “act now” issue, the deeper issue is always one of putting events in a larger context. Time is a dimension just like space and therefore, in strategic terms, it has perspective. Since we live within time, experiencing one moment after another, temporal perspective makes the most recent and upcoming events seem larger and more important while events in the past and future seem relatively small and minor. This perspective can be misleading, so we have to think and discuss Climate.

Climate represents current events, current changes, and, more deeply, the forces driving those events. Events are the basis for most of our decisions. We naturally react to events. We adjust to them. The strategist must know how to put events in the larger context of climatic change so we can know which events demand attention and which can be safely ignored. However, if our goal is to get others to act, we cannot do that on our own authority. We must leverage events and the deep forces of Climate to explain why people must act.