Delving into Heatwave Scenarios

Later this month I’ll be facilitating a scenario session looking at the potential impact of a long standing heatwave event for the City of Greater Dandenong here in Australia.

Heatwaves kill more people than any other weather event. By a long way. Importantly they also have a ‘fat tail’ with physical impairments to individuals often catching up with them two or three days AFTER the heatwave has subsided. For a local Council, exploring where their strategy might be stretched or even fall over is a key outcome of this process. It’s not designed to enable people to feel comfortable they have everything covered. To the contrary, the aim of this scenario will be to push and stretch the perceived capabilities and capacities such that they are likely to break. The key question for us will be ‘where?’.

There’s a great line up of people involved. Along with CGD’s own staff, the Department of Health, Monash Hospital, Ambulance Victoria, Victoria Police, Department of Transport and a raft of other Councils (among a wide variety of other organisations) have provided significant time and input at helping guide the context for the emerging narrative.  Although the ‘traffic light’ scenarios are common in a Government setting and 2×2 Deductive scenarios common in Industry, this will be an Inductive scenario using questions to help write another page into the story line.

At the conclusion, the key session takes place – ‘If that, then what?’ which will explore the beginnings of a strategic response to an event of the kind described. Without tying a scenario to a specific strategic thought process, most scenarios are moot.  Included in that session will be NeuroPsychologist Dr Kim Hazendonk of Positive Brain who’ll give an overview of what happens to our decision making, and those of members of our communities, when suffering heat stress, and importantly, what organisations can do to prepare their staff for such an outcome. We already know, few organisations have considered how to prepare their staff.

It’s going to be a big day and hopefully I’ll be able to report back a few days after the event to let you know how it went

The Wheel Keeps Turning

Sep 28, 2024

Or so it may seem. This quarter has seen me interstate facilitating some strategic planning workshops; overseas working with an established Government client, working with CGD, SELLEN, and Hilton Manufacturing among others here in Oz, a couple of weeks holiday down in Tasmania, and also the occasional radio interview looking at the ‘Future of…’. And…

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Employee Engagement starts with a Deliberate Exploration of Futures

Aug 13, 2024

Some thoughts flowing from my session discussing challenges in Futures Consulting posted by James Balzer: I’d explained to the group that what I do is engage employees in thinking about their own and their organisation’s future potential. My strong view over twenty years of work in this space is that employee engagement is DIRECTLY driven…

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The Future of Workplaces

Jul 10, 2024

Tomorrow morning (Friday the 12th)  I’ll be joining Elizabeth Kulas on Disrupt Radio discussing the Future Of Workplaces. There’ll be a particular focus on why most organisations choose to struggle because they rely on outdated models of employee management. A 7.15am kick-off where, in about 7 minutes or so, I’ll try to distill 20 years…

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A New Form of Goal Directed Intelligence

Jun 28, 2024

It’s extremely rare that I post to a specific article and say ‘go read this’, which is what I’m doing today. This article on goal directed intelligence at a micro level is a challenge to read. And I do recommend you read it because it pushes forward our understanding of how our biology and arguably…

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Looking Up Feeling Good Partners with Steel Chicks

Mar 10, 2024

If you followed my numerous posts over the years you know I like jumping in early on new products or services – not all have been successful, especially on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but you roll the dice sometimes and see what happens. Over the years Looking Up Feeling Good was an early community investor in…

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Dragging Workplaces back to the 1760s – the Work In Office Dilemma and the Productivity Myth

Feb 16, 2024

In the 1760s Josiah Wedgwood changed forever the nature of workplaces. He expanded his pottery business and constructed a new large scale factory that required two critical elements: a) Systemisation of processes to ensure consistent high-quality outcomes b) Skilled workers on site The systemisation required experimentation, observation, trials, failures and recording of data – what…

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Dr Kim Hazendonk joins our Speaker’s group

Jan 18, 2024

We’re delighted to announce that Neuro-Psychologist Dr. Kim Hazendonk of Positive Brain has accepted our offer to join our elite speaker’s group. We’re looking forward to bringing her to more groups across Australasia as she discusses effective workplaces, positive mind management, and managing busy lives. If you have a need for an engaging and passionate…

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Embracing the Hybrid Workspace – are You there yet?

Nov 15, 2023

I flag my bias towards the need for a vastly improved approach to managing staff in the work environments. V A S T L Y improved. I’m still surprised at how clunky, disorganised or naive some senior managers are when it comes to that part of the business that considers ‘people’. And rather than cover…

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Exploring Strategy Development – the Organisational Evolution model

Oct 17, 2023

An interesting public workshop in Perth in the first week of October introducing a varied group to the Organisational Evolution model. The Org-Ev is the model I developed for the start up of The Australian Strategic Planning Institute in conjunction with Steven Bowman. Given the diversity of the group, there were a number of surprises…

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Perth workshop 5th October almost fully booked

Sep 18, 2023

A note for those of you in Perth that there are just 4 spaces left for the Introduction to the Organisational Evolution Model workshop at Adina Apartments in Perth.  The Org Ev model has been designed to enhance Strategic Planning and decision making and this introductory workshop is aimed at those looking to attend the…

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