Do exercises achieve these goals? Probably not. Not because they can’t, but because the organizations planning and executing these exercises don’t use them as real tests. These organizations are engaging in “exercises in futility.” But organizations may be ready for a new kind of dynamic exercise, based on risk-reward principles.
The goal is to provide a deliverable: the after action report or improvement plan. What if we changed this deliverable to measurable improvement in actual policy, procedure, capability or technical assistance to support performance? This would change the conversation from planning exercises, to exercising plans or at least exercising the concepts in the plans. If there is no plan, consultants could help the organization by using dynamic exercises to develop hypotheses, reveal weakness, uncover strengths, innovate new approaches to problem-solving, and then support planning efforts to capture and implement improvements based on the exercise outcomes.
Why hire a consultant? It’s most likely because you don’t have the resources, time, proper perspective and/or expertise within your organization to see issues or opportunities clearly and articulate them in terms of larger policy or doctrine. So why not take advantage of your consultants’ perspective and expertise, in real time, and let them influence the outcome of the exercise? The exercise becomes a laboratory to test current approaches and alternatives, in a safe, risk-managed and controlled environment.
In my experience, too many participants talk their problems away during discussion-based exercises, without really understanding the value of critical thinking and analysis of shortcomings — they don’t understand the value of failure. Failure is a powerful teacher and motivator. A risk-free exercise, in which failure is not an option, ends up being just another exercise in futility.
We need to move from risk-free, discussion-based exercises to risk-managed, decision-based exercises that give participants freedom to try out new ideas and fail. This would give organizations opportunities to find their failure points, find successful ways to cope with failure and strengthen their plans, policies and operations.
Our nation has made huge investments in exercises in terms of money, time and resources but has little measurable improvement to show for it. In the current budget climate, organizations are likelier than ever to cut exercises because of failure to link with real, demonstrable improvement. Ironically, exercises are more important than ever.
Exercises provide us with risk-managed environments to create the shared understanding necessary to fuel the innovation we need. It’s time to stop participating in these exercises in futility and start building a culture of risk-managed planning through a new approach to exercises.
Brian C. Bannon has more than 16 years in emergency services experience and provides emergency management consulting to federal government clients as a senior emergency Planner with Booz Allen Hamilton.
