When planning your tabletop exercise, consider asking these 5 questions: 1. Why are we conducting this exercise? Is this a request from senior management or has it come down from the board? Is it a new internal or externally regulated requirement? Whatever the purpose, you should try to clearly define the reason you’re about to…
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown that many organizations were not prepared to respond to and manage the impacts caused by the virus. Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) were either not developed or were out of date. That’s why it’s essential that your BCP remains up-to-date and is regularly validated. In this blog we provide…
The Master Sequence of Events List (MSEL), is the primary document used to manage an exercise, to know when events are expected to occur, and to know when to insert injects (information) into the exercise. A summary version of a MSEL document can also be used to assist exercise facilitators in the monitoring and management of exercise…
During an exercise or war game there will often occur a key decision point when it becomes necessary or more time efficient to break out some of the participants into a separate smaller group, often called a “breakout group.” This small group can be very effective in obtaining a comprehensive view of a problem,…
Prior to designing your Crisis Simulation Tabletop Exercise, ensure you understand the end-to-end process that you intend to use. This can be as easy as a four step process as I describe within this short post. Step 1 – Compose Develop your exercise objectives and general exercise design (who, when, where and…
Creating a crisis management simulation exercise for your company for the first time can be a daunting task that requires time and resources. When preparing these sessions it is important to understand what resources exist to assist with the successful planning and delivery of the event. Here are three resources that might help…
Click HERE is you missed Corporate Wargames – Lessons 1 & 2 Click HERE is you missed Corporate Wargames – Lessons 3 & 4 Lesson Five – Exercise / Wargame Hot Wash A hot wash is the “after-action” discussions and evaluations of an organization’s performance following an exercise/war game, training session, or major event,…
In episode 20 of our Whiteboard Wednesday video series, Rob chats again from home about the importance of building and maintaining your crisis management skills in between exercises.
Click HERE is you missed Corporate Wargames – Lessons 1 & 2 Lesson Three – Exercise Program vs. Singular Exercises A bottom up approach works well when a company or organization wants to exercise their response to a disruption of business operations at the impacted site. Examples of such disruptions include weather-related events (hurricane, flood,…
In the 18th episode of our Whiteboard Wednesday video series, Rob discusses Exercise Logistics – when, where, technology, materials, security requirements, etc.