DEF with 2020 Vision
Clear-eyed focus as we continue onward
by Michael Madrid
January 14th marks 90 days since I stepped into the role of Executive Director. I’ve been thinking constantly about where we need to go in the next two years and beyond. I’m excited to share my vision for DEF with you, and I welcome your thoughts and ideas!
At the time Executive Directors transitioned in 2017, DEF faced a number of organizational challenges that included declining conference attendance, high participant turn-over resulting in low member retention, and limited remaining financial resources. Since that point, with the leadership and coordinated efforts of the Executive Director and volunteer Leadership Team (LT), DEF went through a period of accelerated growth. The organization expanded rapidly as a community, with additional Agoras starting around the country and a myriad of events happening every month. Through dedicated fundraising efforts and resource management, DEF’s financial stability was recovered and ensured.
Transitioning into the role of Executive Director, I reflected on this recent history while formulating my vision for the coming two years. Understanding the past and looking ahead to the future requires standing upon certain implicit assumptions and perspectives. Though certainly non-exhaustive, the following list highlights four key, fundamental assumptions that shape our common understanding and direction.
- DEF is both an organization and a community. We pursue a fundamental balance between 1) our origin and identity as a decentralized, grassroots movement focused on people at a local level, and 2) our need for infrastructure and strategic, national-level leadership and decision-making to scale effectively and remain viable in the long term. Our mission demands both. The organization is rooted in the community, in alignment with our People-focused value. The community is where this organization came from, and it is the community this organization exists to serve and support.
- As an organization, DEF requires financial resources to be effective. In a practical sense, DEF cannot operate as an organization beyond the grassroots movement without a formal structure that manages funds in service of community activities and operations. DEF solicits and expends money with the goal of supporting the community and its mission, specifically not for the purpose of making a profit. As such, DEF is incorporated in the District of Columbia as a non-profit, 501(c)(3) entity.
- As a community, DEF is an insurgency. We are driven by a mission and mindset, rather than by processes and production. We are composed of members from various populations, who take the spirit of DEF back to their “day jobs” and effect good change from within.
- DEF should do the things we are uniquely suited to do. To make the greatest impact with our limited resources, we adopt the entrepreneurial spirit of focusing on our unique capabilities in deciding what we do. While often discussed, this assumption is still being adopted and will come to underpin every decision and direction for the organization. It will become a routine part of our organizational culture to hold ourselves accountable to this idea when making a decision and when periodically culling through our existing activities.
The community is where this organization came from, and it is the community this organization exists to serve and support.
The mission of the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum is to inspire, connect and empower people by convening events, forging partnerships and delivering tangible solutions. We do this in order to promote a culture of innovation in the national security community.
- By promoting, we mean taking action to teach, to share, to champion, and to embody by example.
- By culture of innovation, we mean a transformation from innovation as a collateral activity to innovation as a way of thinking, living, and operating that is an inseparable part of the national security community’s DNA. Making anything such an integral part of organizational identity will require multi-generational change from both within and without. Further, it cannot be seen as a singular defined end state at which, upon arriving, we can plant the flag and sing “Mission Accomplished!” Rather, a culture of innovation will require relentless adaptation, retrospection, iteration, and disruption.
- By national security community, we mean the ecosystem of individuals and organizations (both formal and informal) which play a part in the defense of the United States of America. This is a far-reaching umbrella encompassing the academic, private, and public sectors: spanning from the DOD to the Intelligence Community, from defense primes to startups.
…a culture of innovation will require relentless adaptation, retrospection, iteration, and disruption.
Along with many others, we envision a defense innovation base comprising a strong body of disruptive thinkers and doers, embodying entrepreneurial mindsets and skills. As a nation, we will certainly continue to face crises — whether from total war, limited war, global catastrophe, or technological singularity. In some of these cases, the traditional defense industrial base will be called upon; but in all of these cases, we believe the defense innovation base will be the country’s ultimate advantage and the linchpin of success.
We envision DEF as the catalyst for this new defense innovation base. DEF inspires people to join the movement and seek more than the status quo. DEF connects people in a far-reaching network to spark relationships and enable collaborations that are the lifeblood of this envisioned base. DEF empowers people not just to observe or critique, but to actually be part of the solution and drive forward change. In other words, DEF plays a foundational role, both chronologically and structurally, in precipitating and shaping the defense innovation base.
DEF empowers people not just to observe or critique, but to actually be part of the solution and drive forward change.
In pursuit of our mission and our role in national security, we must train our focus on five elements within the next two years specifically:
- Solidifying DEF’s organizational foundation. While the community has grown rapidly, the base upon which DEF is built has not fully scaled and kept pace. Many of the mundane details of DEF’s structure and operation as a 501(c)(3), from business administration to financial accounting, need to be addressed. Within the next two years, we will ensure our responsibilities as an organization are in good order: current, in good standing with the relevant authorities, transparent to our community and partners, capable of passing a full audit, redundantly accessible by members of the volunteer team. Most importantly, we will put in place survivable systems to keep DEF in good standing that do not rely solely on any single points-of-failure.
…we will put in place survivable systems to keep DEF in good standing that do not rely solely on any single points-of-failure.
- Refining DEF’s membership value proposition. What does it mean to be a DEF member? How do we tangibly and continually provide real value and benefit to our members? DEF has grappled with these questions since its founding, with several pivots in membership and partnership structures along the way. Within the next two years, we will refine and then articulate DEF’s value proposition to its members, in alignment with our mission of promoting a culture of innovation. We will do so while recognizing that this will evolve throughout time as we remain relevant by learning and adapting to the needs of our constituents and environment.
What does it mean to be a DEF member? How do we tangibly and continually provide real value and benefit to our members?
- Testing and evolving national programs. DEF has been working to test the hypothesis that it can “deliver tangible solutions” by structuring programs and opportunities which deliver unique value based on the needs of the community. The current experiments testing this hypothesis comprise the national programs: Firestarter Fellowship, Gutenberg, and Hopper. Within the next two years, we will provide each program with cross-functional resources and bandwidth-capable teams to continue one to two cycles of each program. We will define parameters, gather data, and conduct retrospectives in order to satisfactorily test the hypothesis. We will deliberately continue iterating and evolving the programs in order to deliver tangible solutions in ways that DEF is uniquely suited.
We will deliberately continue iterating and evolving the programs in order to deliver tangible solutions in ways that DEF is uniquely suited.
- Diversifying the DEF community. A culture of innovation is necessarily one with psychological safety and where diverse perspectives and backgrounds are valued. Both for DEF’s sake and in order to model what we wish to see in national security broadly, we value breadth in our community, and we strive to make diversity a signature trait and strength. Within the next two years, we will identify specific segments of the national security community that we need to engage, and we will bring those cohorts into the DEF fold. We will also institute an empirical process for continually understanding our community makeup, identifying gaps in diversity, and addressing them. We will take an active role in living up to our core value of Inclusiveness.
We will institute an empirical process for continually understanding our community makeup, identifying gaps in diversity, and addressing them.
- (Re)establishing paid staff in limited roles. With continued scaling and ever more ambitious goals for impact, DEF will eventually require the undiluted bandwidth that paid staff can provide. Likely roles include fundraising and donor support, routine operations of national programs, and business administration to include financial accounting. Whether full or part-time, there are many nuances to this type of change in organizational dynamics, and it must be approached carefully and deliberately with utmost focus on maintaining DEF’s culture and relentless focus on mission and community. Within the next two years, we will expand and stabilize our revenue streams to support at least one full-time paid position or two part-time paid positions, and we will clearly define the roles and responsibilities for these positions.
…we will expand and stabilize our revenue streams to support at least one full-time paid position or two part-time paid positions.
If we are effective at our mission, then DEF as an organization and a community will be recognized for its valuable insight and consulted as a thought leader at the leading edge of innovation in national security. Credibility puts DEF in a position to have an even greater impact on national security culture. It will further reinforce its ability to inspire, connect, and empower members of the community. The experiences and relationships found through DEF play pivotal roles in our members’ development and careers, equipping them to achieve positions of influence where they can affect good change. The members of yesterday are the leaders and influencers of today and tomorrow.
The members of yesterday are the leaders and influencers of today and tomorrow.
In the sense that a culture of innovation is an ideal rather than an end state, we ensure that we ourselves do not stagnate, but remain adaptive and flexible as an organization and a community. There will always be work to do. It’s also key to remember the nature of our identity: DEF is not run by the DOD or operated as an official activity. DEF is not resume padding or part of one’s personal brand. DEF is an insurgency fighting against the way it’s always been done, a rebellion against the status quo. This work is done by people who seek change out of love for what they change, not hate. This work is messy and tough going. Day by day in this good fight, inspiration and relationships are so important because they provide hope. And rebellions are built on hope.
The Defense Entrepreneurs Forum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that inspires, connects and empowers people by convening events, forging partnerships and delivering tangible solutions. Our mission is to promote a culture of innovation in the U.S. national security community.
If you are a civil servant, military member, academic, entrepreneur, policymaker, or technologist (or just find the idea of helping solve tough problems enticing), we’d love to have you join the DEF Community!
