Future FRM>A new perspective: opening the flude-gates Creative thinking is a core skill for consultants. To develop new ways of approaching the challenges our customers set for us, we must constantly challenge ourselves to take new creative perspectives. Flooding provides just such a challenge: how do we deal with too much water being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Rather than simply relying on more of the same tried and tested techniques, we decided to think again, free of preconceptions and constraints. |
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Armed with that thought, a group of diverse but like-minded individuals from around Entec got together to challenge the flood issue. We decided we needed some flood expertise in the room, but supplemented that with an ecological perspective, a broader water management view, engineers, a climate change expert, plus representatives from marketing and communications, commercial and business strategy.
The plan for the day was to share some thought-provoking background material ranging from climate change impacts and the Pitt Review to some innovative project examples. Then, through a creative process, the aim was to take ‘the issue’, ie:
“Too much water, in the wrong place, at the wrong time”...and find new ways to look at it. Without great expectation of being able to ‘solve’ flooding, we wanted above all to prove that creative thinking can provide new ways of approaching an issue, to provide a stimulus for further development of Entec’s flood-related work, and fresh material to provoke discussion both internally and with our customers and the flood risk community. We also thought we needed a new name to go with the new thinking, drawing away from the negative, and providing a brand for our new flood thinking. So, if only because we liked the sound of it, we settled on ‘flude’. Of course, we’re still talking about the same flood, but it’s going to sound different.
To structure the exercise, we decided to borrow from a creative thinking technique by Michael Michalko, using his Thinkpak card deck for stimulus. Michalko’s technique uses the acronym SCAMPER as a set of directed questions which are answered in respect of the issue to provide new ideas. Each person approached the discussion from the perspective of one of the SCAMPER stimuli: click on each one to see what we came up with:
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Combine it with something else As you’ll see, the ideas are presented in raw form, unedited, and without judgement on their merit. Some are more practical than others, some are mere flights of fancy or streams of thought. Some are serious, some are not. But this is not just an indulgence in free thinking: it was a starting point for taking the debate forward, providing a glimpse of the opportunity we have collectively to take a new perspective on flooding. |
So what?
What have we taken away from this exercise? We’ve certainly changed the way we think about flooding. If you could measure the national mood, the prevailing attitude to flooding is of fear and the need for protection. And in many ways, rightly so. Floods can be devastating (our recent chat with Mary Dhonau of the National Flood Forum certainly brought this home), and there’s no room for flippancy. But this workshop helped us see that we need to accept flooding as part of our lives, that the responsibility for dealing with it must be shared, and that managing it sympathetically can have a positive impact on our built and natural environments. If we think about flooding in a different way, we won’t always feel compelled to reach for the hard engineering and the defences, but instead learn to live with it, to work with natural processes.
As consultants helping central government, local authorities and development clients manage water and flood risk, we are in a position to put this new thinking into practice. Skills in ecology, landscape and urban design, water management, and, yes, engineering, need to be employed sympathetically. Good communication is essential: ensuring that all stakeholders, from individuals living in flood zones, to local authorities and government agencies (and not forgetting consultants) have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities.
Can we link biodiversity and landscape strategies with flood management strategies? Can we engage nature’s own engineering solutions? Can we work together to find a solution that everyone is happy with? What will the private sector do in a context where flooding is seen positively as an opportunity and not just a threat? What new products and services will be developed as people make it their flood? Through this multi-disciplinary holistic approach we can learn to live alongside flooding, rather than in conflict with it. Without really meaning to, we seem to have adopted the word ‘flude’ as a kind of Entec code for this new way of thinking and talking about flood. And if that has no other merit, at least it serves to remind us of the need to keep challenging the status quo. Now we’re opening ourselves to your constructive criticism, and intentionally so. We hope that your reaction will be part of the next step, challenging the thinking, and developing it further. So please don’t hold back.
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What next
We’ve exposed some of our creative thinking, and where it’s taking us, and we’d love you to join in. How would you address the SCAMPER questions? Can you take our initial thoughts and develop them in another direction? Take one or two and let us know how you get on. It would be great if we could add some external perspectives and ideas, take another look ourselves, and build a picture on this site of something genuinely innovative and useful.
So click here to access our feedback form, and join us on our quest for ‘flude’ creativity.
