Crisis Simulation Exercise for Executives: Is Your Team Ready?

Dave Greenberg has never met a chief executive who wasn't sure their team would be great in a crisis, however what he sees in his simulations often says otherwise. A crisis simulation exercise is how you find out whether that confidence is earned, before a real event tests it in front of your workers, your board and quite possibly WorkSafe.

Dave spent 25 years on Wellington's rescue helicopter and now runs crisis simulations for executive teams and boards. When he came on Health & Safety Unplugged he put the problem in one line: there's a big gap between assumed readiness and observed behaviour. This post covers what a crisis simulation should test, how to run a simple one yourself and what it means for directors in New Zealand.

What Is a Crisis Simulation Exercise?

A crisis simulation exercise is a rehearsal where your leadership team works through a realistic scenario as it unfolds, with new information and complications landing as they go. It tests the people and the decisions, not just the document. A crisis plan tells you how the business intends to respond, the simulation tells you whether it actually can.

Why Executive Teams Get Pulled Into the Weeds

Dave's view is that it usually starts with experience. Many executives worked their way up through the business. When they hear about a problem they know it intimately, they may have dealt with it themselves and they forget what their role is now.

His example from the helicopter is a good one for any board. In 4,000 rescue missions, not once did the chief executive or the board chair decide a job sounded difficult and jump on to help. Their work had been done long before, setting the limits the crew worked within and the risk the organisation was willing to accept, then making sure the money, equipment, training and maintenance were there. Dave never had to ring them for permission because that permission came with being part of the organisation.

One simulation that genuinely shocked him started with what should have been a simple scenario for an infrastructure company, a worker hurt on site. With the schedule up on the wall in front of them, some of the executives spent their time on where the ambulance would come into the site. When Dave said their board would be worried about the schedule, they told him their board cares about people. His answer was that it does and it also cares about return on investment and everything else boards worry about. That's where the executive team's attention belonged. Before the debrief the chief executive asked how they'd done. Dave told him they'd have been great as an incident management team, however as a crisis management team he had some big feedback.

Caring about the injured worker is exactly right and nobody's arguing otherwise. Dave's point is that the business has good operational people who can sort out where the ambulance comes in and look after the family. The executive team is the only group that can deal with what the board needs to know, whether work stops anywhere else, what workers, families and clients hear and how the rest of the business keeps running.

One of the best examples Dave has seen was a simulation at a large infrastructure organisation, where the chief executive sat with the crisis team and stopped anyone who got up to leave the room. Unless they were going to the bathroom, they were sent back to their seat to focus on the crisis, not to go and help the operational team.

Incident Management Versus Crisis Management

The difference between the two teams is easier to see side by side. Plenty of businesses use the same people for both and that's fine as long as everyone knows which hat they're wearing.

What Should a Crisis Simulation Exercise Test?

These are the things I'd want a crisis simulation to show an executive team, several of them straight from what Dave sees in the room.

• Who decides what. Who can stop work, spend money or speak publicly and whether everyone at the table gives the same answer.
• What happens without the key person. Dave's first move in most simulations is to take away the person everyone relies on, often the chief executive or the health and safety manager, by telling them they're on a flight with no wifi. If the team has never practised that, they're in for a shock.
• Whether anyone brought the plan. Everyone knows they're coming to a crisis exercise and Dave still often finds a room with no printed copy of the plan. That's when he tells them the internet is down.
• What the board hears and when. Who rings the chair, how quickly and what they say, plus who decides whether the event is notifiable.
• What workers, families and clients are told. Who says it, through which channel and how often it's updated.
• Business as usual. In the national search and rescue exercises Dave ran, the best performing police districts were usually the ones where the district commander let someone else control the operation and governed by walking around. The rest of the business still has to run while the crisis team works.
• Several things at once. Dave builds his scenarios on what he calls polycrisis, problems stacking on top of each other. Nothing happens in isolation any more.

The Health and Safety Scenario Crisis Exercises Often Miss

Crisis exercises are often built around cyber attacks, lawsuits and reputation. Those matter, however a worker seriously hurt on the job is the scenario that tripped up the executives in Dave's infrastructure exercise and it's one every business with a critical risk needs to rehearse.

It also brings legal duties that land in the first hour. A notifiable event has to be reported to WorkSafe (or the relevant regulator) as soon as possible after the business becomes aware of it. The site also has to be left undisturbed until an inspector arrives or says otherwise, apart from the limited exceptions the Act allows such as helping an injured person or making the area safe. An executive team that has never rehearsed this tends to find out during the event that nobody was sure who makes the call. I recommend building at least one exercise a year around one of your critical risks. My post on what a critical risk is under the Health and Safety at Work Amendment Act 2026 covers how to identify them.

How to Run a Simple Crisis Simulation Exercise

Dave doesn't need much imagination to build a scenario. Any news site gives him a hundred he could use tomorrow. Start with something realistic for your business and keep the first one short.

1. Pick a scenario from your critical risks or the news, close enough to your business that nobody can say it would never happen.
2. Set two or three things you want to test, for example how quickly the chair is briefed and whether a clear decision gets made about work at other sites.
3. Use a facilitator who isn't part of the team being tested. That way the team can't steer the scenario away from its weak spots.
4. Take the key person out early and see who steps up.
5. Add complications as you go, such as a media call, a second event or the internet going down.
6. Give one person the job of observing, noting when the conversation drifts into operational detail and who leaves the room and why.
7. Debrief straight away and honestly, record each action with an owner and a date, then report the findings to the board.

The smallest version of this costs nothing at all. Dave's crew used to sit around the coffee table and ask what they'd do if today was the day something big went wrong, based on that day's weather, who was on duty and the state of the aircraft. Dave suggests a few minutes of the same at the end of every executive meeting to keep the thinking fresh between bigger exercises.

How Often Should Executives Run a Crisis Simulation Exercise?

Dave's view is that every skill is perishable, crisis leadership included. On the helicopter, if the crew hadn't done a winch operation on a real job in 90 days, they had to go out and do an expensive training flight. A skill you don't use starts to fade and the time you find out shouldn't be on a ship far out to sea. A crisis simulation run three years ago doesn't tell a board much about the team it has today.

The law doesn't set a frequency for crisis simulations. What I'd recommend is a short what-if discussion at executive meetings, a tabletop exercise at least once a year and another one after any big change, such as a new chief executive, a new site, a restructure or a serious event. Every PCBU already needs an emergency plan that says how its emergency procedures will be tested and how often. My post on whether emergency drills are a legal requirement covers that side of it.

What a Crisis Simulation Means for Directors

Officer due diligence under section 44 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 includes making sure the business has processes to receive information about incidents and respond in a timely way, then verifying those processes are actually used. A crisis plan on the shelf shows a process exists. A simulation is one of the few ways a board can see it working before it's needed. From 1 April 2027 the Amendment Act restates the officer duty around understand, ensure and verify and the verification point carries straight across.

Dave's line on this was plain: a board that wants to know its legal responsibilities are covered will ask for proof and proof doesn't come from a checkbox exercise. It's the same lesson that runs through the Gibson decision on the Ports of Auckland, where a busy safety programme wasn't the same as checking the controls on a critical risk actually worked.

Crisis Readiness for Small Businesses

As a sole operator Dave knows the other side of this well. In a large business someone else can keep business as usual going while the crisis team works, while in a small one the owner is usually the response and business as usual suffers while they deal with it.

Being small doesn't make planning pointless, it just changes what the plan needs to cover. Name the person who would step in for each critical role, even if it's someone outside the business, keep the key contacts and the plan somewhere you can reach without the internet and talk through one what-if scenario with your team every so often. As Dave put it, if you've never thought about it, it's a bigger problem still.

Watch the full conversation with Dave Greenberg on Health & Safety Unplugged below. Dave runs executive crisis simulations and keynotes and you'll find him on LinkedIn.

Frequently Asked Questions About Crisis Simulation Exercises

What is a crisis simulation exercise?

A rehearsal where a leadership team works through a realistic crisis scenario as it unfolds, with new information and complications added along the way. It tests decisions and roles, not just the written plan.

What's the difference between a crisis plan and a crisis simulation?

The plan records how the business intends to respond. The simulation tests whether the people named in it can actually respond that way under pressure.

How often should an executive team run a crisis simulation?

The law doesn't set a frequency. I'd recommend a tabletop exercise at least once a year, short what-if discussions at executive meetings and another exercise after a big change such as a new chief executive or a serious event.

What's the difference between incident management and crisis management?

Incident management deals with the event itself, such as making the area safe and getting help to an injured person. Crisis management is the executive team's job of protecting the wider business, its people and its relationships with the board, regulators, clients and the public.

Does the law require a crisis simulation in New Zealand?

Not by that name. Every PCBU that manages or controls a workplace must have an emergency plan under regulation 14 of the Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016 and that plan must provide for testing the emergency procedures, including how often. Officers must also verify the business has processes to respond to incidents in a timely way.

Who should take part in an executive crisis simulation?

The chief executive and senior leadership team, the people who would handle communications, legal, people and operations and ideally a director or the board chair for at least part of it.

Sources: Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, sections 44, 55 and 56; Health and Safety at Work (General Risk and Workplace Management) Regulations 2016, regulation 14; Health & Safety Unplugged, episode with Dave Greenberg. This post is general guidance, not legal advice.