Tuesday afternoon (30 july), in addition to the topics listed in our earlier post, we will also have the following, lead by Sally Nugent, former CEO of the Asset Management Council, now Director, Sallyent Pty Ltd, and currently working on a new book on asset management, culture and leadership,
1. How and What to ask: do you know what decision model you are using for your project or plans, and what questions to ask? For example
- Why is it important to make decisions promptly? (The Consequences Model)
- How do we identify the ‘next big thing’? (The Hype Model)
- Why does the printer always break down just before a deadline? (The Results Optimisation Model)
Reference The Decision book Fifty models for strategic thinking
2. Have you considered the context of your project or required solution with ‘open systems’ in mind. How does context influence the questions you ask?
Margaret Wheatley (2006, Leadership and the new science: discovering order in a chaotic world) points out that much of the current thinking in management science is based on Newtonian mechanics – an approach primarily based on reductionism – the best way to understand the whole is to break it up into smaller parts and understand those individual parts. The premise being that if you understand how the heart works and the liver works, you will understand the entire body. The problem is that two critical elements are missing
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- understanding the individual parts doesn’t provide any understanding of how the parts interact.
- very few organisations operate in an environment where they are closed off from external factors.
Also
I am also hoping to add a discussion on real options analysis.
So if you find sitting and listening to others in conferences a bit passé, join us on Tuesday afternoon, where you get to take part in the entertainment!
Sign up in the comments, or better, write me at penny@TalkingInfrastructure.com
And I will send meeting details.
Infrastructure spending is often justified on the grounds that we are ‘building for the future’. If we truly believe this, and if we are concerned to provide a safe and prosperous world for our children to inherit, then we are running out of time. This is the conclusion of “No Time for Games: Climate Change and Children’s Health’ by Doctors for the Environment Australia where they describe the many ways in which periods of excessive heat, disease carrying flood waters, storm events and rising sea levels are seriously impacting the physical and mental well being of our children. This is not a hypothetical. It is happening now. And the recent NEG decision to support coal under the guise of providing ‘reliability’ for renewables is, unfortunately, symptomatic of the hypocrisy of the time.
We can regret the loss of leadership as David Shearman did in his excellent article in the ABC Adelaide news this morning “Climate change is World War III, and we are leaderless” and urge our elected members to do more, and we should do this.
But maybe we need to DO more? Maybe in our leaderless world we need to take leadership into our own hands? In the past we have tended to leave large scale infrastructure decisions to others. Perhaps this now needs to change? No Time for Games has this to say about Infrastructure:-
Infrastructure and risk reduction
‘Protecting children’s health also requires risk reduction in sectors other than health such as housing, agriculture, urban planning and transportation. Improvement in urban and regional planning design such as relocation away from areas at risk from natural disasters or sea-level rise, or better housing design to reduce heat impacts, are examples of reducing the risk of climate health impacts to children.
Reducing socioeconomic disadvantage in children and improving baseline health, food security and education are fundamentally the best form of climate change adaptation due to their role in making children and families more resilient and better prepared for the environmental risks brought by climate change’
We can all have a say in promoting these changes, directly where we are able, and in voting for measures which improve them and against those which don’t.
That the increasing health effects of climate change disproportionally affect children challenges the most fundamental call of humanity, to nurture its young.
Failure to act is a major intergenerational injustice
My thanks to Ian Spangler for drawing my attention to this.
I hope that you have enjoyed thinking about Doug Bartlett’s Four Post series on ‘words matter’. So why not grab yourself a cup of coffee and sit down and write a comment? If you agree with the interpretation that Doug has adopted, do tell him, and tell us why. Equally, if you would have interpreted the words (and the challenge that goes with them) differently, tell us that, and why. If you have useful examples, add them.
There is plenty of scope here for comment and now there are TWO reasons for doing so.
- As a thank-you to the blog poster, a courteous acknowledgement.
- As potential for ideas, topics and speakers for our coming Podcast series
If you have not yet caught up with our news on our coming podcast, see our Weekly Roundup, Sunday July 1st. – and watch for updates in our coming Sunday round-ups.
Note:
Latest comments show up in the right hand side bar here on the front page, as well as being attached to the post itself. So add comment to any post. It doesn’t have to be the most recent to be seen.
The third in our series on ‘words matter’ by Douglas Bartlett, Manager Asset Planning, City of Kalamunda. Do you agree? As usual, Doug welcomes your responses and alternatives.
Grenfell Tower Fire June 2017
Risk management, when taken to its root cause, is about the potential harm to an individual. But not just any individual, it is the harm to the person assessing the risk. We are all, by nature, selfish and will always assess and measure things against ourselves (no matter how gracious and service oriented we may be). If I assess the risk of a Bike Plan failing to deliver its outcomes, I can talk about how the community won’t get the health benefits or maybe safety improvements that it needs, but whether these things happen or not is irrelevant to me unless I (personally) can be affected by it. I can be affected by getting blamed for the failed outcomes, or by losing reputation. So the core perception of risk comes down to how the individual perceives the threat of harm.
Risks are ‘managed’ by introducing practices that are thought to decline the level of risk. Risks (in terms of AM planning) are typically recorded only for significant events, and treatments are also typically not analysed in detail. So the activity of risk management in AM may suffer from a lack of detail, and also may suffer from the assumption that management practices will manage the risk.
In my job, I am uncertain on a day to day basis. I am uncertain when I reply to a request for a new path, because I can’t be sure if the path is really needed. I am uncertain when a developer wants to discharge stormwater into the drain pipe, because despite the calculations and standards there are a huge number of assumptions being made. From an analytical and statistical perspective, I am uncertain most of the time.
So which term is more useful? In consideration of our selfish natures, is it more harmful to me to be uncertain or to try to manage risk? I am uncertain on a day to day basis and it does not appear to be causing me harm. By implication then I won’t try to change practices where they appear to be working (no matter how uncertain they may be). So, I think Risk is the better term as it will drive a reaction from the individual.
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