In the face of a threatening crisis, our intellectual and managerial tradition calls for us to prepare plans. Those plans set out actions and approaches that will be applied at each stage of the crisis. They are fine structures that involve a whole array of responses, in the style of a victory parade where everyone marches in step to an impeccable choreography. Unfortunately, reality rarely fits the plan's assumptions: warning signals are not recognized, managers disappear from the scene, tools do not work. The crisis unfolds on a battlefield fraught with difficulties, and not on a tidy avenue or square prepared for an orderly parade. As the experts continually point out, what matters is not so much the plan as the planning. If we do not heed this, we are bound for failure. This chapter reviews what our grand systems are most sorely lacking in: • An “emergency culture”, an elementary crisis culture: these are known responses, and we must be aware of them. • And henceforth: the capacity to deal with unconventional crises that demand reinvented responses.