In our experience, business teams that practice crisis, disruption, and business continuity scenarios respond faster and recover faster than teams that do not.
Managing crisis & continuity exercises for hundreds of business units worldwide is a tall order. That’s why we’ve developed a set of crisis & continuity exercises that a business leader can execute in an hour or less – and don’t require expert facilitation from a crisis management or business continuity team.
Our Exercise in a Box scenarios and materials were written by the battle-tested experts in crisis management, business continuity, and crisis communications at Bryghtpath.
What's in Exercise in a Box
We’ve carefully crafted Exercise in a Box to make this process as simple as possible for your business leaders to be able to conduct an effective business-centric tabletop exercise in less than an hour.
Here’s what you’ll find in Exercise in a Box.
Overview & Leader’s Guide
The Overview & Leader’s Guide covers how to use Exercise in a Box, including the steps necessary to set up and facilitate a successful tabletop exercise. The Leader’s Guide is intended to be used by a business leader to lead a brief tabletop exercise with their team in less than a hour. It covers all the necessary steps to set up the exercise, conduct the exercise, and capture lessons learned. The Guide is in Microsoft Word format, allowing for easy customization by your team to best fit the needs of your business.
Scenarios
Each scenario is crafted to take the leader and their team through a selected tabletop exercise scenario in an hour or less. We include fifteen scenario guides, described below, that are suitable for most industries and geographies in our Exercise in a Box package. Each scenario is in Microsoft Word format and can be easily customized by your team to best fit your needs.
Alternatively, we offer a monthly subscription that starts with an initial package of three tabletop exercise scenarios. You’ll then receive a new tabletop exercise scenario on the first month of each month for as long as you’re a subscriber.
Support Templates
- After-Action Report Template: A simple two-page after-action/lessons learned reporting template that captures the “wins” and “opportunities” each each exercise. The template can be modified by your team to best fit your needs.
- Corrective Action Tracking Spreadsheet: A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that allows your team, if desired, to capture after-action items and corrective actions across several exercises.
- Tabletop Exercise Hotwash Form: An individual reporting template for exercise participants to complete at the end of an exercise to capture their thoughts about an exercise. This can be used optionally in the after-action/lessons learned process.
- Tabletop Exercise Powerpoint Template: Microsoft Powerpoint template that can be used optionally to assist in facilitating an exercise. The template is unbranded and can be customized as needed for your teams.
Exercise in a Box Scenarios
Our Exercise in a Box package includes fifteen tabletop exercise scenarios that are applicable to any industry and location. Each scenario is presented in a standalone guide for the business leader or exercise facilitator to use – beginning with a situational overview to set the stage for the exercise.
Each scenario then moves through three distinct exercise “moves” that advance the exercise from warning/stage-setting, then to response, then concluding with recovery. Time is compressed in the exercise, often to cover 24-48 hours or longer as the scenario unfolds. The exercise concludes with a brief “hotwash”/lessons learned discussion that can then be captured on provided templates for After-Action Reporting and Corrective Action Tracking.
Each exercise move contains a brief description of what has happened followed by discussion questions for the business leader or exercise facilitator to use for discussion with the participants.
Exercise in a Box Scenarios
Active Assailant / Active Shooter- Building Collapse
- Chemical Spill – Shelter in Place
- Earthquake
- Fire
- Flood
- Hostage Situation
- Hurricane
- Network Outage
- Pandemic Influenza
- Ransomware
- Severe Winter Weather
- Tornado
- Utility Failure
- Wildfire
What our Customers say
We’ve been using Bryghtpath’s Exercise in a Box since rolling it out earlier this year.
It’s been an enormously valuable addition to our exercise strategy by allowing our Directors and VPs to run their own brief crisis & business continuity exercises with their direct reports on a quarterly basis without much involvement from our business continuity team.
The teams love the easy-to-follow scenario guides – and we’re thrilled to see more exercises happening across the organization.
Your Exercise in a Box product is fabulous.
It’s enabled us to allow business leaders to conduct their own exercises and simply submit their feedback via the included after-action form. We’ve been able to conduct dozens more exercises annually without hardly any additional workload for our team.
Exercise in a Box Walkthrough Video - Utility Outage Tabletop Scenario
In this video, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser walks through Exercise in a Box using our Utility Outage Tabletop Exercise Scenario.
Using Crisis Microsimulations to counter Crisis Fatigue and boost Resilience
Pandemics, droughts, floods, school shootings, political turmoil, war.
Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of us are stuck in a riptide of never-ending crises? Flailing arms, saltwater up our noses, a mild sense of panic at what lurks below, and exhaustion setting in.
Yet now is not the time to stop swimming. Threats are evolving at a breakneck pace, and the gaps in our resilience planning are starting to show. Organizations need to quickly get their people re-engaged in resilience thinking and learn to use crisis microsimulations.
But who has the time or energy left to exercise for the next crisis when we still haven’t recovered from the real ones we’ve faced over these past many months?
Sometimes, the best solution is also the most counterintuitive. Like swimming sideways or perpendicular to a riptide to reach the shore.
Could microsimulations be the sideways-swimming solution to our crisis fatigue woes?
- Exercised in a small group
- In less than an hour
- Without the help of an expert facilitator
- And as simple or customizable as your budget and imagination can afford?
If your organization is looking for out-of-the-box solutions to meet your business continuity and crisis management challenges, microsimulations, or what we like to call an Exercise in a Box, might be the answer.
In this article, we talk more about what microsimulations are, their advantages, and how to use them effectively as part of your business continuity and crisis exercise program.
Get a sample Exercise in a Box Scenario
We’re happy to offer a sample of our Exercise in a Box scenario templates at no cost in PDF format.
You can obtain a copy of our Utility Outage Tabletop Exercise Scenario by clicking the button below.
Purchase Exercise in a Box
We offer Exercise in a Box in two distinct options:
- A package of fifteen (15) tabletop scenarios & the resources you need to get started
- A monthly subscription with a new Exercise in a Box tabletop scenario each month. We get you started right away with three initial scenarios.
Additional Exercise in a Box Services
Crisis Playbook
Developing custom crisis management, crisis communications, & emergency plans for your organization is an expensive and time-consuming proposition.
That’s why we’ve developed a comprehensive set of crisis & emergency plans that you can immediately put to use within your organization.
Our Crisis Playbook ™ plans were written by the battle-tested experts in crisis management, business continuity, and crisis communications at Bryghtpath. Access to expert advice and support is also available on a 24×7 basis.
Exercise in a Box is part of our Crisis Playbook brand of products.
Learn more about Crisis Playbook >>
Crisis Management & Business Continuity Services
Our strategic advisory practice develops custom solutions based upon our decades of experience and expertise that address the unique challenges facing your organization in today’s uncertain world.
We have extensive experience in developing, facilitating, and evaluating complex crisis management & business continuity exercises for business teams, C-Suite Executives, and Boards of Directors.
See our case studies on Active Shooter Exercises, C-Suite Active Shooter Exercises, and Ransomware Simulation Exercises that we’ve conducted previously.
Learn more about our Crisis Management, Business Continuity, & Crisis Communications services on our Capabilities page.
Terms of Use
We’re not very restrictive with Exercise in a Box – how you choose to use it after purchase or subscription is really up to you and the needs of your organization, but here are some general guidelines:
- You may change, adapt, or modify the material in any way you see fit for your internal use.
- You may remove our logo, references to Bryghtpath or Exercise in a Box, or other changes as you see fit for your internal use.
- You may reproduce the material inside your organization in any way needed to carry out your tabletop exercises and related strategies.
- However, you may not repackage the content for sale as a product or give it away to another organization or individual who has not purchased the product from Bryghtpath.
Generally, just don’t sell or giveaway the content after you have purchased or subscribed to Exercise in a Box, and you’re good to go.
If you have questions about our terms of use, contact us anytime.
Have questions about Exercise in a Box
or our other services?
We can help.
Our team has the experience, tools, and partnerships to help your organization successfully navigate the rough waters ahead – and ensure your organization is prepared.
Send over a question via email to support@bryghtpath.com
or click here to set up an Exercise in a Box call with our team to get your questions answered