Create and protect value in a changing climate

Helping you think positively about risk and uncertainty

gramma consulting works with clients to identify sources and types of uncertainty and bring to light the drivers and dynamics that shape the world they are in.

Using a repertoire of techniques to draw out knowledge and information, gramma helps governing bodies, policymakers and managers form reasonable expectations about what could affect their prospects.

Scenarios

Risk analysis

Strategies for
change

Pathways to
impact

Scenarios

A good scenario bridges the gap between information about system-level phenomena and local-level knowledge and information. It explores the space of possibility without going off into flights of fancy. It synthesises that information into a credible, relevant and usable form for strategic decisions.

Done well, it will help you break out of trend-thinking and too-narrow enterprise risk frameworks, exposing systemic and local sources of uncertainty, risk and opportunity. It will also identify what must continue through change – the sources of resilience.

For those looking for pathways of change, it is the first step in identifying, analysing and evaluating options and opportunities. It's also how you identify the risk and performance indicators that mark the thresholds of adaptive pathways.

Risk analysis

True risk assessment is not a compliance exercise. Instead, it's a curious inquiry and shared analysis of what a credible scenario could mean in your domain of governance. It is the first step in reducing uncertainty.

All organisations need to identify and analyse risks, with skill, in their local or regional domain of governance. That analysis should include tail-end risks, hazard-impact linkages, outlier events, and compounding and cascading risks. At this level and for these types of risks, the focus needs to be on mapping consequences and drawing information and knowledge from a wide range of sources.

gramma has effective techniques for doing this, whether the source of risk is a changing climate, AI or intergenerational shifts. The results inform corporate strategy, change management and your enterprise risk framework.

Strategies for
change

A strategy is a way to reduce uncertainty through action. It's also the key to accountability and trust in situations of uncertainty.

gramma uses a actor-action-target heuristic drawn from the behavioural sciences to specify goals and actions. This produces the concrete detail needed for effective action and accountability, while staying in touch with the higher-level scenarios and the risks and opportunities identified earlier.

Pathways to
impact

So much that is new and valuable has started life with purposeful, risk-taking research.

For researchers, risk and uncertainty are a source of opportunity, whether in new discovery or applications. gramma consulting has a repertoire of techniques to generate lines of inquiry, explore a research question deeply, and identify opportunities to make a difference with new discovery or cooperative research with partners.

Deep uncertainty requires deep analysis rather than more information. It favours techniques for reasoning about consequences, rather than an assessment of probabilities. This is something we're quite good at. But we do need to create the conditions for it – in our planning workshops, policy development processes and board meetings. To secure resilience and prosperity in the long term, this is the work that needs to be done.

Lynette Smith is the principal consultant at gramma consulting. She has more than 20 years of experience working with subject matter experts in climate science, water, natural resources, the built environment, economics, engineering, health, and IT to communicate findings and inform policy. Before starting gramma, she worked in organisational change management. In the last 10 years, Lynette has worked with corporate and state government insurers on climate action planning, guidance for boards on climate risk, harm reduction strategies, and risk analysis for building resilience.

Lynette’s own subject matter expertise is in the language sciences and philosophy – with specific interests in theories of knowledge and value. It’s a unique set of qualifications that allow her to get traction on how deep uncertainty affects planning and decision making, work critically and effectively across a range of subject matters and data types, and see problems from new angles.

With this strong knowledge base and a repertoire of effective techniques for analysing risks and uncertainty, Lynette now works with governing bodies, policymakers, managers and research teams on scenario development, analysis of risks and opportunities, knowledge translation, and strategies for change.

Lynette is a member of CSIRO's Enabling Resilience Investment Panel, providing services in capacity building and change management to the Enabling Resilience Investment team and CSIRO.

Lynette is a true believer in our capacities for foresight and change. She is on a mission to build those capacities so we can work collectively, cooperatively and effectively through the problems we face now. A regular speaker at conferences on risk analysis, adaptation and water security, she is keen to dispel myths and anxieties about risk and uncertainty.

Contact us

Lynette Smith
lynsmith@gramma.com.au
+61 (0) 412 388 025