Disaster Recovery Journal, Summer 2010

EXERCISING PLAN
Exercise
of Adult
Learning
By THOMAS M. MAGEE
The

George Sheehan, physician, author and running enthusiast once said “Exercise is done against one’s wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse” I think that quote seems to apply equally to the field of emergency management and business continuity. Everyone hates to perform exercises for a variety of reasons but do ever so reluctantly. This reluctance comes from either the anger from one more thing to do in an already compressed schedule or maybe from a fear of the unknown. Exercises shouldn’t be viewed that way. Exercises can be your friend and offer many advantages to an organization. This article will show that in certain clarity how exercises can help your program.

Some bosses ask why they have to conduct all these blasted exercises. They have long lists of why they shouldn’t do the exercise – money, time too short, the event will never happen, etc. Nowadays every business needs a continuity plan. And every plan needs to be exercised in order to be effective.

Everyone has stories about what exer-
cises should and could be. One must look
past the pain of the antidotal stories to
what can be. Exercises can be great ways
to test plans, technology, and people. They
also can be great ways to enhance opera-
tions. Great ideas tend to spring up in the
heat of the moment. That passion sparks
innovation like few other things in the
average world. The last great advantage
of exercise is what they can bring to your
group in the area of training. Training of
personnel is always hard. It seems harder
now in times of tight budgets and other
challenges. People are reading less and
demanding any communications media is
entertaining over anything else. How does
one train with that mandate? Exercises
can help with that problem.

This anxiety does not take away the great need to conduct some sort of exercise of plans and for that fact the exercising of people. There is no other way to accurately see if the intent on paper matches reality. Frequently plans miss important details. The missing factors frequently lie in the seams. Factors, programs or people that rely on inter-relationships are frequently the things plans forget. An example of what I am talking about is gas for vehicles, mechanics or wreckers for broke vehicles are the things that written plans forget. Those things don’t show up at a fast read. They only show up in the context of doing the act.

All too often people, manufactures and users tend to believe what the marketing department puts out in the commercial or on the pamphlet. They say item X can do this or that. The item can start the car in the morning, fly around the block, read the neighbors paper, make coffee and 20 other tasks on a tank of gas. You will never know if the wild claims the manufacture states their reputation on are true until you take it out of the warehouse and see if it does what it claims. Then the issue of integration comes into play. Nothing works in a vacuum. Your device will support someone. It will need someone to support it like to put gas in it. You will never figure out those relationships until you test it in an exercise.