9. Flourishing

Being part of, or witnessing, a terrible disaster is clearly very distressing. How do we minimize this kind of distress and continue to flourish in the future as we face extreme climate events such as wildfires and flooding? How do we identify and learn from past events lying hidden, unrecognized and unforeseen as failure incubated? What are the global ‘grand challenges’—both natural and man-made? What are the UN Sustainable Development Goals? To achieve them do we need to reverse the fragmentation of the professions into ‘silos’? What is ‘joined-up’ thinking in ‘joined-up’ organisations and nation states and how important is it? Despite all the advances in science, we know less actually than we think we know. Contingency planning that expects surprises must be the new norm. Learn anew how to learn together is the new wisdom. Use the golden rule ‘do not do to others that you would not have them do to you’, whatever you are told to believe, is our tenet. Behaviour is more important than belief—imperfect doing is better than uncertain knowing. But to do all of this collectively requires leadership that we can trust—perhaps the biggest challenge of all?