We aren’t talking about side-bends or sit-ups here. This is a different type of New Year’s resolution and it’s about why you need to practice your incident and crisis response protocols through crisis exercises.
Exercising means talking through or acting out a scenario that your plan is intended to handle. Exercising helps your team to get more comfortable with their role and reveals gaps in existing plans (or realize the need for a plan if you don’t have one already). It is also a great way to engage your team – after a crisis exercise, there is an increased appreciation and desire for crisis preparedness. The investment in time is limited, but the return is significant – making this one of my top recommendations for the year ahead.
A crisis plan that hasn’t been exercised isn’t much good to anyone. Because when an incident occurs, it is unlikely anyone will use it. And that is the whole purpose of having a plan – to have a guide of what to do (and what not to do) when something goes wrong. If a plan isn’t exercised, there isn’t any way to know if it will actually work.
If your team doesn’t have crisis plans or hasn’t exercised the plans before, the best way to start is with a simple tabletop exercise. If your team has done tabletops before or does them regularly, a simulation might be the best fit. See below to determine what makes the most sense for your situation.
Tabletop exercises. In a tabletop exercise, your team will talk through their crisis plan and their role. To create a tabletop, you will need a good facilitator, a likely scenario, some goals (of what you are hoping to test or learn), and the response team. A tabletop generally is a series of “triggers” that should put your team into action – talking about the steps they would take given the situation and how their plan applies. As the complexity grows, there may be added challenges intended to test different aspects of the plan (depending on your goals).
The more your team exercises, the more complex the situation can become to test different aspects. Afterward, it’s important for the team to share what they learned and observed. The result should be a clear list of improvements needed for next time. Altogether, a tabletop can be completed in two to three hours. Our facilitated tabletop exercises run two to four hours.
Simulations. Another type of exercise is a simulation. Similar to a tabletop, there are roles, a likely scenario, goals, and triggers. However, instead of talking through actions that each person would take, the team does those steps – by acting them out. This means that if “share a media statement” is in step one of your crisis plan, you would actually write it. Acting out these steps shows the time each step takes, reveals gaps that may not be obvious from reading the plan, and surfaces steps that could be done in advance (to include in the plan) that will save time at the moment.
A simulation can even go so far as to mimic social media sites, media calls, emergency responders, and others that would be involved in the scenario. Simulations are a good fit for teams that have talked through tabletops and are looking for a greater challenge. A simulation is closer to a real-life scenario and a greater test of the crisis plan. Typically, simulations will last longer than a tabletop, from a half day to several days, and should include the same debrief at the end to capture observations and a list of improvements needed. Our crisis simulation exercises show what that looks like at full scale.
Overall, tabletops and simulations are a great way to test plans, get teams thinking more in-depth about the processes in place, and bring alignment to core crisis responders internally. Regular (monthly or quarterly at least) exercises are the best way to keep everyone comfortable in their roles and to keep plans up to date. Short, self-run tabletops of under an hour make that cadence realistic; here is how to use them. For how to sequence all of these over a year, see crisis simulation and exercise program best practices.
Don’t forget to test yourself – don’t play the facilitator every time – you need practice just like your team.
Keep Going
A few ways to go deeper if this was useful.
- Read more. How to create and conduct a rewarding crisis management exercise, or the Ultimate Guide to Crisis Management.
- Run your next exercise. Exercise in a Box® gives your leaders 15 tabletop scenarios they can run themselves, and Exercise in a Day® builds a full custom tabletop in one business day.
- See every option. Our exercises page covers tabletops, simulations, executive and board exercises, and more.
- Talk to us. Set up a call to think through your next exercise with us.
