The expert's blindspot - by Roz Lasker from Melissa Cortizo on Vimeo.

In this short film, Dr. Roz Lasker, Former Deputy Assistant-Secretary for the United States Department of Health and Former Divisional Director at the New York Academy of Medicine, explores what she calls the blindspot in leaders of most organisations who fail to see the value of information possessed by people in the frontline, about safeguarding their families and their own lives in times of crisis. She says strategic leadership must develop engagement skills to tap into essential knowledge which vulnerable people have.  Dr. Lasker and her colleagues have spent years studying community engagement and she believes the blindspot in leaderships results in failure to anticipate and prepare effectively for future humanitarian hazards and even increases the potential risks.  Dr. Lasker says those with responsibility for preparing for humanitarian threats need to go beyond the limits of their expert frame of reference and involve ordinary people in ‘futures thinking’.