JKF: Visionary Leaders Teach Others to Look “UP”

"Without Vision, the people perish." Proverbs 29:18

As a new president, John F. Kennedy (JFK) was energetically dedicated to furthering the great causes of the American legacy but he saw what rightfully concerned him about doing so based the state of the union, an anxious nation with no clear direction. A people of great capacity, of unparalleled drive, innovation, and industry that suffered from no collective goal to which they could apply that capacity for unity and achievement.

He was in a position all leaders find themselves at one point, he saw a lack of direction and felt the weight of responsibility to decisively lead others to their best future, securing stability, welfare, and success, through a defined purpose. The people were without vision and had begun to perish and the evidence was the products of uncertainty, doubt, tension, and unease, a process of slow decay where the disengaged became the disenchanted.

Kennedy's Vision for America

Kennedy understood that to lead effectively he must posit a vision that was worthy of the people it affected. To provide a new horizon. A destination that made people look “Up”. One that required them to reach and stretch and grow. He chose the moon.

Key experts, politicians, researchers, and agency heads warned him this mission was impossible, that they simply lacked the resources, the science, the talent, the ability to connect the disparate organizations that it would dispirit the people proposing the attainment of such a great accomplishment that could not be realized given present circumstances.

The first step he took was stepping out of the shadow of his own doubt into the light of inspiration and then invited others to do the same.

In his words, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

View his powerful speech on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=we+choose+the+moon+speech+

What his vision accomplished: 1) Americans looked up at a promising achievement, not around at conditions that led nowhere 2) They understood that fulfilling the vision was impossible without their individual contribution 3) They understood implicitly that it was a vote of confidence for Kennedy to choose the most demanding and rewarding goal- and it brought out the best in people because they were reaching for greatness and 4)  It proved that when you commit to a goal that is impossible now the potential to achieve it flies back in time, unlocking peoples' desire and capacity to achieve it.

In the end, it wasn't science, technology or mathematics that closed the distance of 238,900 miles from the Earth to the moon- it was vision.