Global Forum – July 5-8, 2011

After spending four meaningful days together July 5-8 at the Sundance Mountain Lodge in Monument, Colorado, the first-ever REI Global Forum is now history! The conference was a continuation of conversation that began in December 2010 during REI’s Strategic Thinkers’ Forum.

Fifty REI staff and board members attended the historic conference and examined the important issues of REI’s foundation and purpose, its identity, its values, its distinctives, its outcomes, and its organizational structure and style. If that seems “dry” and rather “corporate” to you, it certainly did not to the attendees! Several times it was necessary to cut off spirited conversation for lack of time—which is always a good problem to have when you facilitate a forum.

Conference attendees were fully engaged in conversations about the following topics:

• REI’s mission statement and corporate identity

• REI’s defined mission, vision, values, and beliefs

• Charting REI’s course for the future and confidently answering the questions, “What is REI?” and “What Does REI do?”

The work product of the REI Global Forum will be given to the REI Leadership Team for refinement and restatement in terms of a universal mission, vision, values, beliefs, and identity. It will then be passed to the executive committee of the board for approval before going to the full board for final approval in November 2011 at the annual board meeting in Hanoi. That final product will be a “rallying cry,” if you will, for recruiting new staff, raising new monies, and for pioneering new initiatives.

Our donors and supporters will see few visible changes. But from the staff members’ points of view the mostly inside-out changes of perspective and spirit will produce impact for years to come. REI staff members from around the world—many meeting each other for the first time—now sense greater clarity and camaraderie in the work of “building people to build nations” than they have ever sensed before. As a result, REI’s future influence will be far greater than its history!

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