Today, everything contributes to the acceleration of history: discoveries, thoughts, raw information are relayed in real time in all languages and throughout the world. An innovation falls into public domain within a year or less. So it is difficult to maintain competitive advantage for long, unless you are constantly renewing the contours of the innovation. This 24/7 watch movement is not only the result of successive revolutions in the means of communication and telecommunications, but also of the open warfare that is global trade and the empire/influence of international finance – at the expense of labour and local value creation. This world for which we are responsible , half sensitive, half immetarial and already too much complex, generates more problems than solutions. As if in a bad dream, reality sometimes seems to elude us: global warming, health crises, migratory flows, galloping demographics, international terrorism/banditism … do not find concerted sustainable solutions.

Thus, in addition to national equations with known parameters, we are confronted with more frequent and sometimes very serious disturbances for which we are poorly prepared – cycles or logics of these problems being less predictable since they are relatively new. Hence the interest for the company to question itself in the light of a renewed, broader and more complete risk mapping and to imagine its own crisis management system. The integration of these tools into its current practices will effectively prepare it to anticipate and resist sudden and serious shocks.

It is the type of initiative that is being implemented by highly structured players involved in markets with atypical, often seismic developments as are many African countries. The periodic updating of risk calibration and the distribution of roles for crisis plan management also extends from severe economic downturns to periods of strong and/or prolonged growth.

Like military practice, detailed planning, a sense of danger, discipline in execution and the ability to switch to Plan B in the heat of the moment become indispensable skills for effective crisis management. A form of change management that is carried out at fast pace.

Contrary to popular belief, business management in Africa requires great riguour and multiple skills, as well as modern and exemplary managerial behaviour. The historical groups on the continent have developed as second nature a battery of processes and reflexes for permanent crisis management. This is a source of inspiration, both here and there, for coping with the increasingly brutal hazards of a world in turmoil.