‍SRLA MONTHLY NEWSLETTER September 2024

‍From the President’s Desk

Dear reader, welcome to our September Edition of the SRLA Monthly Newsletter. I hope that the last six months you enjoyed following the developments around our association and the discussions from our members that we wanted to share with you through this newsletter. All that was possible due to highly dedicated and hugely valuable work of our Board Member and Chief Editor of SRLA Newsletter, prof. Peter C. Young. I’d like to thank prof. Young for his outstanding contribution and great leadership in creating knowledge content of SRLA Newsletter. From October this year and for the next six month this critical role will be transferred to another Board Member of SRLA, Thomas Prorok, the Managing Director of KDZ – Centre for Public Administration Research in Austria. I hope our growing audience will continue exploring the world of public risk leadership though the SRLA Newsletter!

Magda Stepanyan
SRLA President

‍SRLA in the news

SRLA is starting a new initiative to provide video responses to the questions raised by its network members on various aspects around risk, risk management and risk leadership. The first video Q&A explains the strategic risk leadership (SRLA), some key elements of the SRL concept, and how it differs from risk management.

You can find the link here: https://srla.eu/library/videos

or on SRLA YouTube Channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@SRLA-srla/videos

SRLA Bookshelf

This month we feature David C. Krakauer’s recently published book, The Complex World: An Introduction to the Foundations of Complexity Science.  While this book may present some challenges to the general reader, SRLA views this book as offering an excellent background for individuals thinking about Complexity Leadership and Complex Adaptive Systems.

The Complex World, originally appeared published in Volume 1 of Foundational Papers in Complexity Science.  It presented (and presents) an entirely new framing of nature, of the human role in the natural and technological worlds, and what it means to prosper on a living planet.

Krakauer notes, “We live in a complex world—meaning one that is increasingly connected, evolving, technological, volatile, and potentially poised for catastrophe. And yet we continue to treat the world as if it were simple: linear, unchanging, disconnected, and infinitely exploitable.”

Complexity science is an approach to understanding and surviving in a complex world. In this concise and comprehensive introduction, Santa Fe Institute President David C. Krakauer traces the roots of complexity science back to the nineteenth-century science of machines—evolved and engineered—into the twentieth-century science of emergent systems. By combining insights from evolution, computation, nonlinear dynamics, and statistical physics, complexity science provides the first scientific framework for understanding the purposeful universe.

For followers of SRLA this book is helpful in better contextualize how modern risk management is shifting its primary focus from risks (measurable uncertainties) to living in a complex environment, which contains—yes—risks but also unmeasurable uncertainties, unknowns, unknowables, and various emergent phenomena.  It is from this changing orientation that we see the rise of a greater focus on Sustainable Resilience for both organizations and societies—and, indeed, for the planet.

Meet a SRLA Board Member Luc Kupers

Luc Kupers fullfilled an entire professional career as a civil servant.

From 1981 until 1989 he worked as Inspector of Finances (administrative and budget control) for the Belgian Federal Administration. More specific the departments of Public Works and Public Health and Environment. Between 1985 and 1988 he worked as Advisor in the Cabinet of the Minister for Public Works and the Minister for the Budget (Flemish Government).

In 1989 he reoriented his career to the public local authorities. Between 1989 he was general manager of the social services in the city of Hasselt, which included a public hospital and services for the elderly. In 2009 he moved to the city of Ghent for the same function, in a much bigger city and a much bigger organisation. In 2019 he moved to the post of deputy general manager in the city of Ghent, where he retired in March 2023.

Education: master in law from the University of Leuven (1980).

Connected professional roles and missions:

• Chair of VVOS (Association of Flemish Social Directors) between 2004 and 2018
  
• Vice-Chair and co-founder of Exello.net (prosessional association of general managers in Flemish local authorities), between 2018 and 2023
  
• Ambassador of Exello.net, since 2023
  
• Board member of VVSG (Associaion of Flemish Cities and Municipalities)
  
• Board member of Zorg Vilvoorde (local welfare organisation in the city of Vilvoorde)
  
• Editor in Chief of VIEWZ, professional magazine for the welfare and care sector in Flanders
  
• Editor of IMPULS, professional magazine for the general managers of local authorities in Flanders
  
• Council member of ESN (European Social Network), the largest network of public social services in Europe
  
• Secretary-General of SRLA
  

Core fields of professional interest: public service and public values, public administration, resilience.

Values: cooperation (respect, confidence, trust), tolerance, mildness (gentleness, generosity). 

Experts' Corner from SRLA Member

Risk at the Coal Face: Part IV

Democratizing Risk Management. Our toughest contemporary challenge?

By John Schembri, MSc. SRM (L’cstr.); PgC, OHS (P’mth); SIRM; CBCI.

An ex-Serviceman of eighteen years’ experience in operations and command, John has held a Master of Science degree in security risk management from the world-renowned Scarman Centre, University of Leicester, UK, since 2001. He has extensive experience in critical infrastructure, specializing in resilience, digitalization of risk management and operations in challenging environments.

Key words: risk, risk management, risk principles, complexity, risk value chain

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