In this period of strong health crisis with important implications in the business community, it is time to look for a way out of the crisis to ensure a revival of activities. As such, the Chief Executive Officer of GAINDE 2000 shares three management approaches according to the degree of impact of this crisis on the functioning of companies.
During his visit to the information site «Leral», the Chief Executive Officer of GAINDE 2000, Ibrahima Nour Eddine DIAGNE, analysed the place of management and leadership in a context of crisis. Introducing his reflection, he reminds that usually the crisis has a term, which makes it easy to manage. It defines a crisis as a factor that disturbs the normal functioning of things. A factor that can be more or less violent in its occurrence and impact. However, in the current context, it is a health crisis whose term is unknown with a global trend. This makes things much more difficult. It is not enough to manage a one-off situation, but rather a process for which there is no indication that can inform us about the end. Therefore, it is becoming complex for management,” says Mr Diagne. In other words, it is not a management of adaptation or change, even less transformation. It’s all three at once.
He explains that companies, depending on the level of impact of Covid-19, will have different management methods.
First, there are companies that are heavily impacted by the crisis. These include the hotel industry, transport, trades that can no longer operate under normal conditions. For these companies, the management of the crisis will undoubtedly translate on how to stop the machine; how to stabilize the human resources that make the machine run how to prepare to restart. The stakes of management for this category of company is more radical, estimates the Director of GAINDE 2000.
The second category of companies are those that are affected moderately. That is where the big challenge is because we don’t know if we should close, open or prepare for two or six months of crisis.
It is in this situation, he says, where all the strength of management and leadership will be needed. Because it will be a question of mobilizing confidence to confront the uncertainty that does not nourish confidence.
The third category are the actors with low impact because their activities are not likely to suffer the ups and downs of this crisis.
It is the primary needs (feeding, bathing, dressing) that will not suffer from this crisis. “These are three categories of companies that will require three types of management, three types of leaderships to be able to weather this crisis (…)”, reminds Ibrahima Nour Eddine DIAGNE.
Reminding that a brilliant manager before this crisis, it was the one who managed to take the resources at his disposal, to mobilize the energy that is in his company to generate value. According to him, there was a kind of management method that made everyone have, in his own way, the talent needed to achieve results with means. Today, in this crisis, the stakes are no longer the same, most companies are not in the logic of profitability, but rather in the logic of sustainability.
