One of the most challenging keynotes in my career. Normally it takes me one or max 2 phone calls in order to prepare a keynote speech. For this speech I had at least 10 phone calls and 6 conference calls to prepare.
A challenge was how to deliver the desired message to the management?
(German Government is not the most “open culture”)
In good corporation we decided not to deliver a message but asking questions to the audience. (All risk managers in very sensitive areas). I used metafores and explained that one of the foundations of the safety culture in aviation is speaking free without fear for consequences. We used a direct score phone system and the answers given by the risk managers were projected on a separate screen. The answers were very clear, and rather confronting for the management. GIZ (Gemeinschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, a German Governmental organization with 18.000 people working in 120 countries spending a budget of 1.3 billion Euro)
It is good to hear that within GIZ the statements I made in the keynote are still used. The managers working in the field recognized the issues pointed out.
