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Writer's pictureSteve Murphy

Is it HOT in here?

You've invested a considerable amount of time and energy into your emergency plans and just as much effort has gone into conducting an exercise of that plan, now what? Hopefully your exercise wraps up with a hotwash, a quick meeting of all players to get their immediate impressions of what worked and what didn't. For many organizations the hotwash is the only chance they'll have to hear from everybody that participated, regardless of the role they played everyone involved has insight that must be captured in your 'lessons learned' or 'after-action' report.


It is not uncommon for organizations wait days or weeks after the exercise to conduct a more formal debriefing. In doing so they often find that not everybody is available and a great deal of time and energy has to be expended to conduct multiple debriefings over an extended period of time. Not only is this resource intensive it often results in spotty recollection of the events.


Conducting a hotwash is a best practice that is likely to provide you with the greatest level of useful information following your exercise or an actual incident, but there is a catch. Your hotwash has to be HOT, honest, open and transparent.


It isn't uncommon for those who participated to want to share the fantastic things that they observed and to congratulate their colleagues for a job well done. It is just as important to honestly and openly share the observations of those things that didn't go so well. The things that require improvements and the tweaks necessary to ensure your plans are as good as they can be.




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