Day 1 of the conference wound up with the Gala Diner and Awards presentation at the Royal Courts of Justice. An imposing location and an enjoyable night.
Beyond the dinner there were some highlights form the sessions on Day 1.
The keynotes got the day off to a good start. Professor Mike Power discussed Risk Culture posed some intersting questions about BCM and its place in the risk universe. He observed that post the GFC there was a greater respect for controls. But did BCM have the respect it deserved from management?
Possibly not as he went on to comment that BCM was often seen as the poor cousin of risk. Perhaps it is not seen as glamourous enough, has weak instituionalisation or is seen to cut across a number of other disciplines.
He offered a positive message in terms of his views on risk culture. We need the capacity to think of alternative futures and build action plans around them. The question is will we have the imagination to see alternatives or stick with our past methods and approaches.
Our ability to imagine and be inspired was boosted by the second keynote from explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes who told us about his expeditions to cross both north and south polar ice caps – complete with several graphic photos of frostbite and gangrene!
I stayed in the Thought Leadership sessions for the whole day, so hopefully there will be others reporting on the other two streams.
The Thought Leadership stream effectively focussed on Crisis Management, Crisis Leadership, Decision making and Supply Chain. I am still at a loss to understand why there is so little debate and discussion, even questions are rare in some me sessions.
Is it that people are uncomfortable, or unfamiliar, with some of the “soft” issues and therefore loathe to ask questions that may seem silly? Hopefully it is not due to a lack of interest as these are probably the key skills that will have to be developed to move the discipline forward.
Looking forward to Day 2, this morning the focus of the Thought Leadership stream is the concept of resilience. Will be interesting to see how the various speakers look at the subject.
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