Crisis Simulations Are Broken - Let's Discuss

Launching a series of 10 articles discussing the why and how we need to change the way we create crisis simulations.

Author

Philippe Borremans
February 13, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Dear reader,

Still running those same old crisis drills? You might as well be fighting a wildfire with a water pistol.

A few years ago, your crisis simulation playbook probably seemed solid. Your team gathered in a conference room, pulled a scenario from a folder, and worked through a neat, structured exercise.

Everyone nodded at the right moments, ticked their checklists, and left feeling reassured that they could handle whatever came their way.

But real crises don’t play along.

They don’t wait for you to brief the team or politely follow your escalation process. While you’re working through your carefully crafted response, reality has already twisted into something you never saw coming.

That’s why I’m writing a series of ten articles on everything wrong with crisis simulation and how to make them actually useful.

Over the next few weeks on LinkedIn, I’ll be sharing my take on why the standard approach doesn’t cut it anymore and what needs to change.

I’ll start with something uncomfortable: making people squirm in crisis training might be the best thing you can do for them. I’ve seen too many organisations run comfortable, predictable exercises that reinforce a false sense of readiness. Real crises don’t give you that luxury.

I’ll cover the obvious problems, like why communication protocols collapse at the worst possible time. But I’ll also dig into the things nobody wants to admit: the knowledge gaps that turn minor setbacks into full-blown disasters and why being technically brilliant is useless if your team freezes under pressure.

Some of the articles won’t be easy reading, but that’s the point. If we’re serious about being prepared, we need to be honest about where crisis simulations fail so we can start designing ones that actually work.

The first two articles are online:

Looking forward to receiving your feedback and comments. 👍

Kind regards,

Philippe

What I am reading/testing/checking out:

  • Tool: Proxy, a fully automated AI assistant for your daily tasks.

  • Research article: We Feel, We Understand: Examining the Moderating Effects of Publics' Empathy on Crisis Outcomes Across Crisis Types and Response Strategies

  • Report: the Anthropic Economic Index, an initiative aimed at understanding AI's effects on labour markets and the economy over time.

  • Case study: how a consulting firm used AI to expand the scope of a systematic review on educational interventions from 50 papers to 550 papers.

Let’s meet!

Here are the events and conferences I'll be speaking at. If you're around, feel free to message me, and we can meet up for a coffee or a Negroni.

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