For Compelling Emergency Management Exercises, Culture Is Key
Culture is the invisible element that can make or break an emergency response. It’s important to understand the fundamentals of emergency management, but it’s crucial to understand the human element—including individual, national, or organizational culture, ethics, superstitions, and reactions. If emergency plans are made without cultural alignment, they can isolate key individuals, offend others, damage relationships, or undercut the emergency manager’s perceived expertise.
Culture, Fast and Slow
Culture can be hard to define across all applications: It’s just too big. Where security and emergency response are concerned, culture is not surface-level diversity or etiquette. Rather, it comprises the daily experiences that shape how people think, communicate, and behave. It can manifest in cultural norms: how individuals speak, escalate issues, express disagreement, or avoid conflict. It dictates who talks and who stays quiet—whether during an exercise or an actual emergency, who people view as the leader, and how decisions are made.
Culture is also made up of values, hierarchies, and decision-making patterns, such as how a group determines who is in charge, whether decisions are made collectively or individually, and how individual judgment is perceived. Faith practices and family roles will often influence these cultural values, whether by individual or region.
Technological habits also matter in emergency management design. Some employees are digital natives, while others are slow adopters. Depending on the region or field, employees may have concerns about government- or employer-monitored technology, and they might leverage unofficial channels regularly. Understanding these informal technology workflows can reveal how information will flow or stall during an incident.
During an emergency, you will not have time to adapt your response procedures to account for cultural factors. That’s why it’s essential to build and host tabletop exercises and training that accurately mirror the real-world environment that people experience.
Organizational or national culture changes slowly, so exercise findings can last over a longer period of time. However, effective plans and exercises must still evolve, because the zeitgeist moves fast.
What’s a zeitgeist? It’s the general intellectual, moral, technological, and social climate of the day, and it shapes day-to-day behavior. It explains why certain channels, formats, and tactics attract attention, like viral trends and memes. With the speed of social media and trends today, though, those trends’ shelf lives are short, but their impact can accelerate, redirect, or distort behavior.
The cultural zeitgeist also reflects the pressures and habits that shape how people interpret risks. It includes the platforms they depend on, the distractions competing for their attention, and the narratives circulating in their environment or on social media.
In exercise design, I use elements of the zeitgeist that influence real decision-making, such as communication habits, device usage, misinformation, workplace stress patterns, or emerging technology.
To make training sessions more relatable, incorporate current social cues, platforms, and norms. Avoid political or sensational elements that distract from learning or could compromise psychological safety. Select cultural hooks that are familiar, neutral, and clearly connected to operational outcomes.
Culture is the operating environment, and the zeitgeist is the moment you are training in. Together, they define how people think, decide, and act under pressure. When tabletop exercises reflect both culture and zeitgeist, they move beyond theoretical compliance to become practical, lived experiences. The goal is not just to test systems but to parallel reality—to design training that accounts for human behavior, social context, and the speed of modern decision-making.
Culture is the operating environment, and the zeitgeist is the moment you are training in. Together, they define how people think, decide, and act under pressure.
Bringing the Outside In
“Training should shift from ‘I teach, you absorb’ to ‘We learn, adapt, and grow together,’ ” said Lee Oughton, vice president of LATAM at Concentric, during a conversation at GSX 2025. “Training should become more human-centric—try to understand before you correct.”
Culture is an essential part of that shift. It is critical to move away from solely executing compliance drills toward behavior-changing practices. Anchoring scenarios in recognizable social patterns, language, and technology barriers can grab participants’ attention and encourage active participation. That engagement, when paired with active listening from training leaders and emergency managers, can feed back into the continuous improvement cycle Oughton espoused. Engagement comes first, and it leads to lessons.
When designing emergency management training exercises and tabletops, I use an A4 method to anchor exercises firmly in how people think, behave, and make decisions.
Attention. People tend to focus more when the content reflects the real world. If the exercise feels foreign, participants tend to disconnect. If it feels familiar, they stay engaged and curious.
Accuracy. Current habits uncover real areas for improvement and potential points of failure. This is an opportunity to see how cultural norms lead operational decision-making—for instance, how someone would escalate issues, who he or she might trust in a crisis situation (formal or informal flow of communication), and how information would spread throughout the organization, if at all.
Adoption. Staff tend to accept changes that reflect how they actually work. If an exercise feels mismatched to the organization, then there will likely be pushback.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, I faced pushback on pandemic tabletop exercises, with participants arguing that the scenario “could never happen in our day and age.” It was not part of their organizational culture to conduct exercises outside the scope of things they had not yet faced.
In this case, the goal is to educate participants on what might happen during a pandemic and how to incorporate it into business continuity plans, rather than proceeding with an exercise scenario. This way, it can potentially eliminate unnecessary resistance and get the organization thinking about the possibility in the long term. You can share the necessary information, just in a different format than an exercise.
Anticipation. Tracking new trends helps identify the next risk before it lands. Hence, exercises should reflect not only what might happen today but also prepare staff for what might happen tomorrow. The delivery is crucial here.
In another case, I designed, participated in, and facilitated an active shooter exercise in a hospital triage area. My co-facilitator and I rotated roles as the perpetrator, moving through nurses’ and physicians’ natural workspaces to observe authentic, unfiltered reactions.
When we introduced the scenario, staff were visibly frustrated, with the general sense that this was “just another exercise” at the busiest time of their day. But that was the point—we wanted to see how they would respond without preparation or scripted guidance. Once the exercise began, their real instincts surfaced immediately: Some froze, some ran, and others stayed with patients despite the risk of exposure.
We heightened the scenario by attempting to access rooms, pushing against doors to enter, creating loud disruptions, and identifying individuals who were unintentionally exposed. Only then did the seriousness of the scenario register. Participants’ attention shifted completely because they saw what was at stake if they did not have clear instructions or practiced responses.
This is where the A4 method came to life.
- Attention came from the realism of the moment.
- Accuracy came from watching natural responses.
- Adoption reshaped the training around the actual environment and individuals’ behaviors.
- Anticipation developed when employees began to understand how to identify and respond to risks.
After the exercise, it’s important to establish goals for participants to work toward. The most meaningful outcomes are determined before the exercise starts—such as more transparent decision-making, faster escalation, or better communication—and the trainer will reverse-engineer the scenario to pressure-test those specific behaviors to uncover areas to improve.
The goal should be to create a safe space in that environment, though, because people will get defensive if they feel they did something wrong. But exercises are not about catching or tricking participants; instead, the point is to reveal how their decisions will shape organizational outcomes.
It’s worth noting how people react when put under pressure, because that exact reaction will likely surface when a real incident comes around. Design a scenario that is observable, realistic, and tied to the actual organizational environment. Then, convert the outcomes of the scenario into policies and tools to improve future responses.
Culture Customizes Exercises
Cultural norms shape how organizations perceive risk, prioritize assets, and coordinate during crises. Tabletop exercises that account for these differences can reveal hidden gaps in protocols and foster more nuanced threat modeling.
Cultural awareness in tabletop design further supports more inclusive and psychologically safe environments, providing opportunities to explore options for resolving an issue. When participants see their regional threat landscape, regulatory pressures, and organizational behaviors reflected in the scenario, they are more likely to engage authentically. This leads to richer insights into how cyber incidents might unfold across different geographies and business units, says Frances MacTaggart, manager of cybersecurity and business continuity at KPMG Canada.
MacTaggart encourages us to think of a game of Jenga, wherein everyone sees his or her piece of the organizational tower as the most critical piece to be on top, until the tower falls. You need to have your participants recognize the tower, not their piece only.
Cultural norms shape how organizations perceive risk, prioritize assets, and coordinate during crises.
Culturally attuned exercises also help identify resilience blind spots. For example, assumptions about data privacy, breach disclosure, or third-party risk vary significantly across jurisdictions. By embedding these nuances into tabletop scenarios, organizations can better prepare for cross-border incidents and regulatory scrutiny.
Similarly, suspicious behavior is not universal. What appears harmless in one setting might indicate danger in another. Body language, eye contact, dress style, body art, eating and drinking customs, and the firmness of a handshake can have very different meanings across cultures, says Miranda Coppoolse, a behavioral analyst, police officer, and executive protection and anti-human trafficking specialist. Exercises will need to account for these cultural differences to ensure accurate lessons are gleaned.
Cultural competence is not just about etiquette; it’s about operational effectiveness, Coppoolse adds. Understanding the cultural fabric of an organization, community, or environment helps security professionals blend in, build trust, and manage threats discreetly. This awareness can prevent unnecessary confrontations and foster cooperation, turning potentially volatile situations into controlled outcomes.
At the end of the day, MacTaggart says, embedding a cultural lens in tabletop design is not just a matter of representation; it is a strategic imperative. It transforms exercises from generic drills into meaningful simulations that build resilience within organizations, increasing their readiness to navigate real-life, complex incidents with agility and insight.
Designing Better Exercises for Humans
Ultimately, whether through an emergency management, cyber, executive protection, or law enforcement lens, culture connects the technical to the human, making training real and relevant and turning awareness into action.
As an exercise facilitator, it is your responsibility to observe reality before you simulate it. Only then can you design based on how teams truly communicate, improvise, and navigate shortcuts.
“To run an exercise focused on process, it is critical to gain a deep understanding of the culture of that group,” says Aric Mutchnick, founder of Red Ball Drills. “For the trainer, it is not about finding the right answers; it is about asking the right questions.”
The goal of tabletop exercises is to develop a shared understanding and align policies with practice, rather than to surprise participants, Mutchnick says. Develop clear, meaningful outcomes that you are aiming to achieve, and share those with participants so they have an accurate and positive picture of the purpose of the exercise.
Make exercises realistic and relatable by starting with a one-page culture brief that highlights everyday realities: common languages and interpreter access, shift patterns and union restrictions, and the informal channels people actually use. Depending on the organization, outline any family or faith needs that could intersect with emergency response plans. Additionally, map out who texts or calls whom, which group chats exist, and how rumors spread. Include those pathways as part of the system you are testing.
Start by selecting a recent event as a template. Unless it’s an element you are training for, exclude political elements. Familiar scenarios attract attention but should be balanced with a comprehensive risk assessment. Teams need to rehearse both familiar and unlikely situations—including low-probability, high-impact cases—to develop flexible decision-making abilities.
Every objective should result in a clear decision or outcome, a relevant data point, and a standard that applies. For example, you might write: “If an outage occurs, the incident manager assumes ownership within 15 minutes.”
Research the communities you intend to feature in your scenarios to prevent stereotypes. Begin the exercise by stating the learning goal and providing a cultural brief for co-facilitators and participants. As the facilitator, you are accountable for establishing an environment that is thoroughly researched and appropriate.
Finally, an after-action review should always follow the exercise. At a minimum, you should implement a three-step follow-through: Identify quick wins that can be completed within 30 days, make policy or process edits within 60 days, and plan capability investments that will take at least 90 days.
The quick wins can include small but meaningful corrections like updating call lists, clarifying notification language and points of contact, and clarifying decision-making hierarchies that caused unnecessary delay. These items require minimal approval and can be fixed immediately.
Within 60 days, the organization should address structural or procedural issues identified during the exercise, such as refining policies, enhancing cross-department communication, or updating training materials. These items take longer because they require coordination across teams.
By 90 days, the attention shifts to longer-term capability building, such as budgeting for technology upgrades, planning facility or organizational changes, implementing new training cycles, or forming working groups to address more complex risks.
The most essential—and earliest—step across this timeline is to designate someone as the one responsible for ensuring that any identified items in the exercise are addressed. This person should believe in the process and what you are doing, so they will be motivated to pay attention during the exercise and follow through.
That designated person can delegate ownership for subsequent items, set deadlines, perform regular verification checks, and schedule a later review to determine whether additional actions or recommendations are necessary. This structure prevents the after-action review from being a static document and ensures that lessons learned from the exercise convert to measurable improvements.
In the end, training is only as effective as the reality it portrays and the actions it inspires. Real mitigation and preparedness come not just from the training itself but from what leadership and teams decide to do after it ends.
Suzanna Alsayed is a PhD candidate and the author of One Failure at a Time. She is the CEO of Hilt International Security Inc., a recognized global security firm specializing in executive protection and emergency management services. Alsayed is also the founder of Evolutz Inc., an independent agency dedicated to elevating branding and marketing standards to maximize ROI. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
