La HPA et les formations étudiantes

The 33 students of Université Paris-Dauphine’s Master of Innovation, Network and Digital (Master IRN) had the honour and the privilege to welcome General Favier as part of Mrs Claire Auplat’s Risk and Crisis Management class.

General Favier served the French nation for 37 years: notably as Head of GIGN (1992-1997 and 2007-2011) and as General of the Gendarmerie Nationale (2013-2016), commanding 100 000 gendarmes. He is now, since 2016, Vice-President of security for the group Total.

We are thankful for his availability and his outspokenness while sharing his experience in crisis management, emergency decision-making and leadership. We were particularly surprised by the similarities he underlined between the army and the business world. He succeeded in breaking some prejudices we could have had regarding both sectors.

We will keep in mind several risks inherent to a crisis that General Favier highlighted:

• Overlapping of the strategic and operational hierarchies.
• Information profusion that creates chaos.

To discuss the role and responsibilities of a leader within a team, General Favier shared with us one of his favourite quotes from J.F Kennedy: « Victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan ». Finally, and as part of our master’s focus, we were wondering how digital tools could serve crisis management. According to General Favier, technologies help to detect early weak signals which may lead to a crisis, but disconnection is essential when the time of critical decision-making comes.

Through this experience sharing, General Favier allowed us to better perceive theoretical notions we had seen in class. General Favier is inspiring, humble, attentive and has great emotional intelligence. Meeting such a leader was a unique opportunity for all of us as we prepare to start our careers.

Mathieu Lévêque, Edouard Ferrero, Amine Lahrichi and M1 IRN class.