Our Concept
Black Elephant combines 25 years of experience in medical safety and aviation with strategic management expertise. We help you develop resilience from a passive obligation into an active property of your system.
What is the problem?
The conditions companies operate in have changed fundamentally. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in corporate governance that increasingly renders conventional management models obsolete.
01.
The gap between complexity and resources:
While geopolitical change and market dynamics are increasing complexity massively, the available resources – in staff and in money – are shrinking. Caught in this tension, classic management often merely administers scarcity instead of securing the system’s future viability.
02.
The gap between formal rules and lived practice:
Rigid plans and purely technical redundancies are no longer enough to stay effective in a world of permanent uncertainty. The future demands competencies that go beyond following processes.
03.
Regulatory pressure as the minimum standard:
The KRITIS umbrella act (Germany) and the RKE act (Austria), for example, illustrate the growing pressure to act. But we know from practice: regulatory compliance is only the lower limit. True resilience does not come from laws and audits alone, but from the operational ability of the people in the system to act.
Black Elephant combines 25 years of experience in medical safety and aviation with strategic management expertise. We help you develop resilience from a passive obligation into an active property of your system. Anyone who fails to act now risks losing control, in an unstable world, over their most important asset: their own effectiveness.
Where does Black Elephant support you?
Our focus is on holistic consulting to strengthen organisational resilience. We combine structural solutions with building the necessary competencies through training and embedding them in everyday work.
What makes Black Elephant different?
- 1A holistic view: hard facts meet mindsetConventional or one-sided approaches usually fall short.
- 2Broad reach: from the boardroom to the front lineEffective organisational resilience requires relevant principles and tools to reach broadly throughout the organisation.
- 3Operational implementation: embedding instead of PowerPointResilience only takes effect when it works without thinking in an emergency. We make sure that strategies do not end up in a drawer but take root deep in your structures and routines.
I. A holistic view: hard facts meet mindset
In the field of resilience, Business Continuity Management (BCM) and IT security, many consultancies and service providers focus mainly on technical and process aspects: audits, risk analyses, emergency plans or infrastructure checks.
The human and organisational factors are often considered only in passing, for example through short training sessions or awareness campaigns.
The result: organisations are formally well prepared, but often fail operationally in a crisis.
We combine structural and regulatory requirements – regarding physical security and the requirements of Business Continuity Management (BCM) – with the decisive competencies of people and organisations: leadership, communication, collaboration and culture.
Learning with a system
Organisational resilience does not come from individual measures. It develops step by step – for people and for organisations.
Professional competencies:
The knowledge needed to master the professional challenges. These competencies are usually present and the subject of most further training. Yet they are usually responsible for only 20 – 30% of undesirable events in a company.
70 – 80% of the causes of incidents, near misses and accidents are missing (inter)personal or so-called “human” competencies.
With AI on the rise, professional knowledge is becoming ever more readily available, so human competencies are gaining in importance. Their development, however, currently receives far less attention.
Procedural competencies:
They support professional and human competencies by establishing simple building blocks for action in organisations that create reliability and resilience. Examples include structuring communication and information, using checklists, structured teamwork and introducing short briefings and debriefings before important team activities, to name just a few.
Interpersonal competencies:
So far they are rarely a relevant part of education and further training, but are largely taken for granted. In crises or challenging situations in particular, their absence becomes evident very quickly: how is leadership exercised, how do people communicate, how are decisions made, how is the workload distributed, when and how is it noticed that someone is overloaded or under too much stress, and how much empathy is shown?
Strategic and conceptual competencies:
They express that establishing the three competencies on an equal footing in a company is a competence of its own (dark green background).
II. Broad reach: from the boardroom to the front line
Effective organisational resilience requires relevant principles and tools to reach broadly throughout the organisation in order to create the necessary culture. Resilience is not purely a leadership task or a single measure, but a cultural and structural property that every employee has to carry.
We offer different formats (for individuals, teams and the whole organisation) that make it possible to convey key resilience competencies across the organisation.
Not every function needs the same format. Our programmes allow tailored development – from raising awareness to intensive experience.
This way, organisational resilience does not arise in isolated spots, but systematically.
Targeted deepening
Follow-up in-person formats transfer the content to concrete leadership and decision-making situations.
Experience-based development
Simulation-based trainings make decision-making and team dynamics under realistic pressure visible and open to reflection.
Pilots of Complexity
Leadership training in the flight simulator
Learn how information, communication and leadership work in the cockpit, and what you can transfer to your own organisation.
- Designed for top leadership teams
- Direct feedback on behaviour
- Makes Black Elephants visible
Become a pilot of complexity
