Day 2 of the Organisational Resilience seminar, continued to deliver value. Engaging in more ways than one – hardly noticed that the seminar day spanned 12 hours!
The day started with a ‘seminar within a seminar’ by Dr John Bircham. Personally I think this 4 hour chunk was worth the price of admission for the whole 3 day – even better value when you have the opportunity to continue the dialog with John and the other participants out of session.
Bircham spoke about two key elements in the resilience equation – trust and engagement. These attribute labels were new to me, but it was interesting to compare and contrast his concepts with those being proposed by other thinkers in this space. I think we are moving in the right direction when I find different people, coming at this concept from different perspectives, and finding similar themes. Diversity of thinking enables the communication, and advancement, of ideas.
As I have written earlier, I am defining resilience as thinking about things in different ways – and John Bircham’s thinking is always worth considering.
The afternoon session changed focus and was based on case study methods. The course handbook is a thick volume of readings and we spent the afternoon reading several of these, discussing in syndicate groups and presenting back to the larger group. Too much material to absorb in the time available, but plenty of new reading for the holiday period – or so I thought.
As it turned out i am going to have plenty to read for a very long time to come! The afternoon also delivered another jewel, again worth the price of admission alone. This is an Institute that recognises the need to play a role in thought leadership – and one of its great contributions is maintaining a comprehensive subject matter library.
Becoming affiliated with the Institute you get access to their library. I have already found (and borrowed) several books I have been meaning to buy for some time. I am also looking forward to making regular use of their journal access service.
The evening session was Colin Chapman delivering a case study on the Queensland floods. He is the Business Resilience Manager for Queensland Urban Utilities, a Water and Sewerage Utility that services one of the most heavily impacted areas. First hand case studies are much more valuable than the second or third hand presentation we are delivered at so many conferences.
All this and there is still another day to go!
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