Progression Sessions

Theme

Resilience - 2026

Resilience as a system property.

Conversations stay open to any topic, yet this season leans toward resilience. Expect a few prompts to nudge in that direction while leaving room for whatever is sharpest in your work.

Introduction

Resilience is how a system behaves when things stop going to plan. We already speak in metaphors: changing wheels while the car moves, swapping engines mid-flight. That is not mismanagement; it is reality.

We live inside systems that rarely shut down neatly. If a system lacks resilience, it breaks. If key elements are missing - information, buffers, options, relationships - it degrades quietly.

Even resilient designs sit in worlds that shift: climate, markets, regulation, culture. The work is not to make things unbreakable; it is learning to see the systems we are in and changing them in flight.

Where Resilience Shows Up

Different domains, same question: when the system is hit hard, does it snap, stall, or reorganize and keep going?

Physical

Roads, bridges, ports, levees, buildings, data centers. Can a city still move people and goods when a bridge closes, or keep buildings functional through heat and storms?

Energy

Generation, transmission, distribution, storage, and demand. What happens when a substation fails or demand spikes? Can critical loads keep running with microgrids, storage, or demand response?

Coastal & Climate

Harbors, shorelines, fisheries, coastal cities. How do ports and communities adapt to sea-level rise and frequent storms? Where do nature-based defenses meet hard infrastructure and policy?

Economic

Households, regions, sectors. How quickly do jobs, income, and tax bases recover after a shock? Does one sector's failure take down everything, or can the economy re-route?

Corporate & Organizational

Companies and agencies shifting priorities, capital, and talent while staying on mission. What happens when a key product stalls or a major contract falls through?

Social & Civic

Communities, institutions, and the trust between them. When something breaks, who talks to whom? Can institutions act together or does everything fragment?

Individual

Each person's system: health, habits, relationships, money, time. Under stress, what collapses first? Where is there slack versus constant brinkmanship?

Why focus on resilience this season?

  • ▸Infrastructure and coastal projects trying to adapt to a different climate, but stuck between rigid rules, slow permitting, and short-term budgets.
  • ▸Teams and organizations operating under constant change while running the car at highway speed.
  • ▸Leaders carrying long-term responsibility while boards, investors, and politics push short-term attention spans.

Resilience is the through-line: whether the systems you are part of can take a hit, learn, and adjust, or quietly accumulate fragility until something snaps.

Thought-starter questions for the season

  • ▸What system are you actually trying to make more resilient, and who else is inside it with you?
  • ▸Where does this system currently bend, and where does it snap?
  • ▸If one key element failed tomorrow - a partner, budget line, site, leader - what would actually happen next?
  • ▸What hidden buffers do you already have (relationships, assets, informal workarounds) and how could you strengthen them on purpose?
  • ▸Where are you over-optimized for efficiency and under-built for slack or redundancy?
  • ▸If this worked, what pattern could others copy in another city, sector, or team?

You do not need polished answers. The point is to have a place to say, "Here is how my system behaves when things go sideways," and work from there.

A note on the conversations themselves

The theme gives direction, not a script. Most sessions start from your current reality: the project you are wrestling with, the decision you are sitting on, the organization or city you are trying to move.

Along the way, we surface your resilience stories - times you bent instead of broke, times the system failed and you improvised, times you redesigned your own flight system so the next hit landed differently.

Those stories are not a side quest. They help us understand how you show up inside the systems you are trying to change - and where you want to be more deliberate next time.