Welcome to 2018 and our January theme – “Get Ready for Change”.
Who is this for?
To get ready for change we need to take it seriously. Over the years, as professionals, we have studied and built up an enormous wealth of practical experience. This experience has served us well, and much of it will continue to serve us well. But some won’t.
Sorting out what was valid, from what is still valid, requires us to challenge practically everything. This not only takes effort, it takes courage. What we know becomes part of who we are, so that challenging what we know seems as if we are challenging, even disowning, ourselves. Moreover, for those who are brave enough to challenge themselves, there is still the problem of disenfranchising friends and colleagues who are content to stay with the way things have always been.
For those who want to take up this challenge, to move ahead and ready themselves for the issues and opportunities to come, but who want to do so without offending colleagues and friends – try out your ideas here! This is a ‘safe zone’. Only those who are seriously thinking about the future comment here. Not everyone agrees, but everyone is prepared to think, to put forth their ideas, challenge those of others, and to be challenged in turn.
Re-thinking
Challenging what we know is an exercise in re-thinking. Here are some of the issues that we will be addressing:
- Re-thinking the aim of infrastructure investment (e.g. what do we mean by ‘public value’ and how do we create it?
- Re-thinking the players – who should be involved in the decisions? How do we involve more points of view? How do we ‘think forward’? (e.g. Citizen’s juries)
- Re-thinking the decision processes (tracking progress)
- Re-thinking the way we measure? (beyond the dollar?)
What else?
What are the issues that you consider we should be looking at in our attempts to get ready for change?
An issue to consider in getting ready for change is the need for a commitment to life-long learning. This is a challenge in itself as there are many ‘fields of study’ involve in infrastructure investment decisions – from political science to public finance to engineering. If we want to re-think how we do things we need to exercise critical thinking about the emerging philosophies and technologies associated with the infrastructure investment decision. In thinking about the emerging philosophies and technologies we need to be able to sift the wheat from the chaff, without making the Watson of IBM fame alleged error of saying there will only be a need for five computers. Critical thinking, discussion with peers, evaluation of progress, learning from failures (and successes) are all part of this commitment to life-long learning.