5 Ideas for Crisis Management

Last night I was at the round table "Facing Crises: How to Prepare Collectively," moderated by Alexandre Florentin with Ziad Touat, crisis management advisor, and Christian Clot, explorer and researcher.

Here are 5 strong ideas I took away:

• Crisis management used to be mostly a military matter, reserved for trained personnel. Now the aim is to bring in researchers, citizens, children as much as possible. Building the right reflexes in the people who will face the problem can change everything.
• Your ability to handle a crisis depends on your ability to accept the reality of the situation. The deeper in denial you are ("this isn't true, this can't be happening"), the harder it is to take steps to deal with the crisis as it actually is. Mental preparation can make the difference.
• The noise level in an ideal crisis room never goes above 80 decibels. People speak calmly; information is received, checked, then processed, the goal being to offer the most relevant options to whoever has to make the decision.
• Humility is fundamental. Be wary of people who see the crisis as a chance to shine and become the heroes of the story. Be wary too of groups that are too uniform: a crisis room full of engineers will come up with an engineer's solution. Same for the military. Cognitive diversity matters.
• Social ties are the key. If you watch my videos, you know this question is on my mind. We need to be able to build social ties at the level of the street, the neighborhood, the city. We need to be able to work with people we like less – or not at all – to reach shared goals when those goals are vital for everyone.

And me, am I ready to face a crisis?