Success criteria for crisis management exercises
Crisis management exercises are the proactive events that strengthen the crisis management capability, by helping responders hone their skills, learn from mistakes, and ultimately get better at managing crisis situations before they happen. Their importance, as a result, can’t be overstated.
But though, there’s clear consensus that organizations should engage in regular crisis management exercises, there’s far less consensus as to what constitutes a successful crisis management exercise.
Without such consensus, organizations often find themselves investing time and resources in crisis management exercises that don’t actually serve to enhance the resilience capability. What’s worse, a pattern of unsatisfactory crisis management exercises often has the effect of delegitimizing the crisis management exercise capability itself. Fewer lessons are learned from individual exercises, rendering crisis responders less prepared when an actual crisis hits.
How then can organizations ensure they’re getting the best out of their crisis management exercises? We look to some of the academic literature to lay out several success criteria for crisis management exercises.
Pick the right exercise for your needs
One of the key factors for successful crisis management exercising is simply picking the right exercise, of which there are many types, including alert exercises, start exercises, staff exercises, decision exercises, management exercises, cooperation exercises, etc.
Despite their number, though, exercise types tend to fit into two large buckets: discussion-based and operations-based.
As the term suggests, discussion-based exercises, including seminars, workshops, table-top exercises, and games, are often used to familiarize participants with plans, policies, and procedures. On the other hand, operations-based exercises, most often used to train on or validate existing plans, policies, and procedures, clarify roles and responsibilities and identify gaps. This type of exercise, often run in real time as a simulation of a real crisis, tends to involve a more realistic response to the exercise scenario.
The choice of the broader exercise format depends on an organization’s needs. Operations-based exercises make sense when there’s a concrete need for strong realism and real-time simulation of the crisis. In contrast, organizations and entities often opt for discussion-based exercises when prioritizing a seminar-based approach with discussion.
Further success factors
Beyond the choice of the right exercise, the research suggests that several other factors predominate in whether a crisis management exercise is successful. Those factors include:
- Goals. Having specific, achievable goals, decided upon as early as possible in the planning process, is essential for the successful conduct of an exercise and extracting learnings afterwards.
- Selection and development. Closely related to exercise goals are scenario selection and development. Indeed, certain exercise goals are easier to achieve in certain exercise formats.
Another aspect of development is the decision about levels of detail and realism in the exercise. It might make theoretical sense to introduce as much detail as possible in a scenario, it has been shown that too many details overload participants with too much information, causing frustration during the actual exercise.
- Participants. Similarly, the goals and type of exercise will determine who participates beyond key decision makers. There’s a robust literature (scholarly and anecdotal) about the importance of a strong moderator or facilitator.
Beyond that role, organizations must also factor in how many people will participate in the exercise, which will influence the format of a given exercise. Add to that, the precise scenario an organization chooses and the goals it seeks to achieve must be recalibrated based on the type of participants involved in the scenario.
Finally, exercises are key to successful crisis management. And as the literature demonstrates, there are certain success criteria you should follow to ensure your exercise capability is built on solid footing.
For more strategies to develop a best-practice, crisis management exercise capability, check out Noggin’s Guide to ISO 22398 for Crisis Management Testing.
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