Interview with Stéphanie Ledoux – S&D Magazine

Crisis management cannot be improvised

Read Stéphanie Ledoux’s contribution to the series ‘Women thinking about today’s world and tomorrow’s’ – S&D Magazine. Stéphanie discusses the Coronavirus crisis and suggests some ways to learn from it and identify best practices, taking a positive approach.

The crisis we have just been through, and are still experiencing, has tested us in recent weeks and suggests that difficult weeks and months lie ahead. Beyond these considerations, we can try to draw something positive from this crisis we have had to face. More specifically:

• The crisis is universal: many organisations still believe that they are immune to crises because of their low profile and very limited media exposure. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, as the Covid-19 crisis has amply demonstrated: all organisations, whether private, public, micro-businesses or large international groups, have been affected. Being prepared is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
• This severely deteriorated situation must be an opportunity to learn organisational and human lessons: optimise procedures, adapt the composition of the crisis unit(s), debrief, organise feedback sessions.
• ACCEPT UNCERTAINTY and learn to navigate and make decisions in the VUCA world that is now our daily reality. In a crisis situation, we are deprived of indicators, reports and visibility, yet we still have to make decisions, and quickly. This can be learned, and the first step is to list the tangible elements that have enabled us to move forward, the information that has been useful to us in making decisions.

These various elements will provide an excellent basis for optimising existing systems or serve as building blocks for a system yet to be defined. They can be reinforced through training and crisis exercises.

Crisis management cannot be improvised, and a little preparation often saves a lot of effort in repairing the damage.

Interview conducted by S&D Magazine.

Would you like to undertake training?