If your company is like most, you have not done any crisis exercises recently. Start with the end in mind. If the company has never done any kind of crisis exercises, don’t start with a full-scale simulation drill. Tabletop exercises are an economical place to begin engaging crisis teams and are effective for validating plans, procedures and policies. They can help build teamwork and facilitate in-depth problem solving and discussion. Tabletops also can be conducted remotely to accommodate off-site team members or simulate the absence of key players.
Full-scale drills, on the other hand, can test the actual deployment of crisis resources in a more realistic enactment of a crisis. Drills can provide a more comprehensive evaluation of team response capabilities.
Best Practice: NIMS
Organizations in industries like healthcare facilities, aviation, power generation and certain government facilities utilize full-scale drills to test plans and team capabilities to act quickly and decisively in large disasters and crises. Many of these organizations use the National Incident Management System, or NIMS, which can significantly enhance the effectiveness of crisis drills by providing a standardized framework for incident management. NIMS encourages the use of realistic drill scenarios to test multiple emergency protocols simultaneously (e.g., evacuation and lockdown).
(Side note: those interested in learning more about NIMS should visit FEMA.gov. They offer several NIMS training courses, and many are available online at no cost. They also offer a comprehensive Public Information Officer (PIO) training program that is best-in-class.)
Best practice: There are a few important questions to consider before planning a crisis exercise.
1. What is the main exercise goal? Is the company aiming to build crisis team skills, validate the crisis plan or test certain strategies?
2. How many people will participate?
3. How much time can you allot to the exercise? 2-4 hours is typical for a tabletop exercise, but full-scale drills usually fill an entire day.
4. What is the budget? Tabletop exercises are inexpensive. Drills can cost tens of thousands of dollars, depending on their size and scope.
5. What crisis scenarios are being considered? Does the team want to exercise just one scenario, or more than one?
The answers to these questions will help the exercise planner construct an exercise that fits company goals. The next step is planning the drill.
1. Plan the Crisis Drill
- Define objectives: Establish clear objectives for the exercise, such as testing specific response protocols, improving team collaboration, or evaluating communication strategies. Build the drill to meet these objectives.
- Leadership buy-in: Involve executive leadership and gain their support early.
- Develop realistic scenarios: Choose scenarios that reflect potential crises your organization might face, such as cyberattacks, product recalls, or natural disasters. Include escalating complexities, also known as injects, to challenge participants effectively.
- Assign roles and responsibilities: Exercise participants should fulfill their assigned role as part of the crisis management team.
- Consider using an outside facilitator: Find crisis consultants who can develop and deliver the exercise. Experienced facilitators can help keep the exercise on track if participants wander too far off topic or land in the weeds, and can provide experienced, objective feedback during the debriefing.
2. Prepare for the Drill
- Communicate the Plan: Notify participants about the drill’s purpose, timing, and procedures to avoid unnecessary confusion.
- Exercise Materials: Prepare to provide the crisis management plan, contact lists, holding statements, and Q&A documents—the kind of materials that would be used in a real crisis—in a form that they would be used.
- Create the crisis scenario and identify the injects: Draft the story line and determine where to “inject” escalations of the situation. Crises don’t happen in a vacuum and there are always “aftershocks.” These kind of escalations make the exercise more realistic and more challenging for the team. Prepare materials you may need to provide instructions to certain team members at various points in the session.
- Dry run: Walk through the planned exercise with one or two members of the team, to clarify roles of participants, facilitators and observers.
3. Run the Crisis Exercise
- Simulate Realistic Conditions: Conduct the drill in a controlled but realistic environment. For example, use mock press releases, news stories, texts, emails or social media posts to simulate public scrutiny and response to the “crisis.”
- Coordinate Teams: Ensure cross-functional collaboration by involving the entire crisis team, including primary members and their designated backups. In a full-scale drill, establish a command center for centralized decision-making.
- Monitor Performance: Assign observers to take notes, track response times, decision-making processes and adherence to protocols. Record key actions for the debriefing.
4. Debrief After the Drill
- Debrief: Regroup immediately after the exercise to discuss what worked well and what didn’t. Use open-ended questions to encourage feedback from all levels of the organization. Create an action list for items to address.
- Analyze Data: Review logs, emails, social media posts, and other records from the drill. Evaluate metrics like response time, communication effectiveness, and overall coordination.
- Document Lessons Learned: Summarize findings in a report to leadership that highlights strengths, weaknesses, and actionable recommendations. Include a timeline to address deficiencies and schedule the next drill.
5. Follow-Up Actions
- Update Crisis Plans: Revise crisis management plans based on insights from the drill. Address gaps in policies and protocols.
- Follow-up Training: Provide targeted training sessions for areas that may need significant improvement.
- Schedule Regular Drills: Make crisis exercises an ongoing practice to ensure readiness for evolving threats. Tabletop exercises, in particular, are economical tools that can help the crisis team improve their response skills and increase their confidence in overall crisis preparedness.
