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
China’s Gift to the world, the #CaronaVirus is not yet as severe as what the US gift to the world (Spanish Flu) was, and still signs are clear that disruption to normality is the key theme. In that the light, the Australian Football League (AFL) need to plan for crowd free rounds. Because that’s…
Read More >Potential Impacts of the Carona Virus will cascade across the globe. With deaths on track to climb quickly now that it has reached epidemic proportions of infection, the fat tail extends to the corporate sector. With whole areas of China on lock down, factories are shuttered and with it, Multinational and local firms who’ve…
Read More >Five days ago I tested positive for Covid. Here’s a bit of what the story has been like so far Tuesday was spent moving on of the offspring out of their rental property in country Vic and back down to Melbourne’s suburbs. A hot day of heavy lifting and a fair bit of driving. By…
Read More >Decision making is an interesting field of inquiry. I’m about three months in to a long term contract with an organisation working on enabling its people to be more effective and the thought that keeps popping into my head is ‘Start with the End’ When you start with the end in mind (know your desired…
Read More >There’s a little problem with food production in the world that not many people want to talk about. About half the world is being starved to death whilst we are seeing a spike in obesity due to over-consumption of food. The strange thing about that issue is that both ends of the food consumption divide…
Read More >My most recent long term client contract had me specialise in Employee Engagement, something I’d done consistently at the Senior and Middle Managers level. But this client need was across the board and at a time when major changes were occuring. With a previous survey of their staff in two states and across three…
Read More >Great to see some quality collaboration between the City of Casey and City of Greater Dandenong aimed at addressing or tackling Social Issues and importantly bridging the divide between ‘our area’ and ‘their area’ artificial boundaries. Well done to both Councils Here’s the oveview of what they’re doing. This one looks to be an…
Read More >Most people who’ve been involved in planning and strategy development will have heard of VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous. Emerging out of the US War College in 1987, it’s come to be more widely used by consultancies aiming to at least ‘sound smart’. But that’s not the main problem with its usage Instead…
Read More >In short – ‘No’. In days of yore manufacturing data meant jobs being done, employed people being paid, sales being made. But with robotics and off-shoring in many parts of Australian manufacturing, it’s no longer the value indicator it once was. In the US it is an even less reliable indicator because in the…
Read More >I’ve writen a fair bit over the years about the need to move futures thinking out of a theoretical approach and into a more applied model. Recently I’ve come off a 6 month project working with the Asian Productivity Organisation, an entity that brings together 20 member countries and their core government policy…
Read More >