5 key steps for designing a crisis simulation

From desktops to full stress-tests, we help hundreds of clients across the globe to design and deliver successful crisis simulations every year. We’ve learned a thing or two along the way. 

Here are 5 fundamental steps to designing an exercise or simulation:

Set your objectives

Your objectives are the foundation of the design process. Consider early on what you want to achieve. Here are some suggested objectives: 

• Build confidence and knowledge in your team
• Identify gaps and vulnerabilities
• Test your team’s understanding of response processes
• Test a new or refreshed crisis plan
• Bring together different levels of response e.g group, region or market
• Assess performance of strategic decision-making, communications, or both

Take time to pick the right objectives. Then you’re in a good position to start designing the wider simulation.

Pick the right scenario

Possibly the most important decision of all. Here are some factors to consider:

• Choose a scenario that ranks high on your risk register (i.e. high-likelihood/impact) to ensure the exercise delivers maximum benefit and, crucially, gets internal buy-in. Also consider emerging risks impacting your sector. 
• Pick a scenario that matches the participants. For example, if your exercise only involves middle management, but the scenario demands an escalation to a senior leadership team, then the exercise is unlikely to meet objectives. 
• Design a scenario that will involve, challenge and engage all the participant team(s). 

Read our post on how to make your exercise as realistic as possible 

Recruit the participants

Once you’ve decided on your objectives and scenario, you then need to pick the participant team(s) that will best enable you to deliver these. This will typically start with a Crisis Management Team (CMT), which decides what to do during a crisis response, and/or a Crisis Communications Team (CCT), which decides what to say. Once you have the core participant group agreed, you can then expand the list to suit different demands of the exercise. For example, involving cyber teams/functions if you’re using a cyber scenario. But remember, more teams and more roles means more complexity in design and delivery.

Start small and build from there

It’s tempting to jump straight into developing an exercise script. Prepare a scenario overview first. Sketch out the key components of the scenario, including the initial trigger issue/incident and subsequent escalation points. Share this with your wider planning team for input and a general sense-check. It’s easier to build a complete exercise script when you have buy-in, than risk having to make fundamental changes to the full scenario when it’s in an advanced stage of development.

Involve subject matter experts from the outset to ensure credibility

Credibility is king in a crisis simulation scenario.You don’t want to invest time and effort in preparing a simulation only to find that participants are fighting the scenario or questioning its credibility once the exercise is underway. To avoid this, enlist the help of  subject matter experts early in the process to ensure the basic technical aspects of the scenario are credible and correct.