Most Crisis Management & Business Continuity exercises are slow-moving, ponderous affairs that might check the box on an audit report but do little to create the environment that enables a true test of the plan and build the “muscle memory” necessary to mature a crisis management process or a business continuity plan. In our view, crisis management & business continuity exercises are an area that is ripe for radical improvement across the industry.
In this presentation and discussion, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser will share his experiences building and leading effective crisis and business continuity exercises that engage stakeholders from across an organization – from frontline managers to C-Suite executives and the board of directors.
While we advocate a “building-block strategy” of crisis management & business continuity exercises as you’ll see in the webinar, a mature organization should have dynamic crisis exercises that fully execute the plan(s) being exercised. Participants should feel an appropriate amount of stress – just as they would in a real-life situation that required the execution of their crisis management & business continuity plans. Individuals and teams, and even third-party vendors or service providers, should actually have to do the work that is called for in their plans.
For example, if an organization’s facilities plan calls for the team to secure a specific conference room and attached kitchen for a corporate crisis management team activation and set up the room to a specific profile, during the exercise you may want to call for exactly that to happen in real-time. This will enable a complete end to end test of the organization’s plan and capabilities.
Additional topics discussed during this webinar include developing a multi-year exercise strategy that builds upon previous exercises, scenario development, how to add realistic “pressure” to a scenario, incorporating third-party partners, effective facilitation, leading a “hot-wash” post-exercise discussion, and crafting an impactful after-action report.
Watch the webinar online via YouTube
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