Real-time exercises are effective learning experiences.
They are effective because they run concurrently with participants’ normal working life, creating additional demands alongside ongoing daily responsibilities. The time commitment of the team(s) can be flexed to ensure there is balance between the challenge presented and operational impacts.
The real-time exercise can also involve large numbers of people from different departments, subsidiaries or locations. This enables a far more complex crisis scenario to be developed; one that combines multiple strands requiring responses from numerous parts of the organisation.
In these exercises information is directed into the team(s) in realistic ways – using the communication channels that occur in a real-life crisis.