Author: Charlie Maclean-Bristol
ISBN No: 9781398628236
Review date: 26/09/2026
No of pages: 275
Publisher: Kogan Page
Year of publication: 01/09/2026
Brief:
price
£45
The long-time consultant and trainer in the field of business continuity (BC) Charlie Maclean-Bristol of PlanB Consulting was unable to find a book that focused specifically on business continuity exercises; so he’s written one.
The book, from the business book publisher Kogan Page, is aimed, the author states, ‘at anyone who delivers exercises for their organisation or a third party. It should be especially useful for those starting to run exercises and wanting a reference book on how to design, develop, deliver, and debrief an exercise; those who would like to deliver a SIMEX [simulated exercise] and want some guidance on what to do; and experienced practitioners, who may find some of the hints and tips from my experience useful.’
He describes it as ‘a practical guide to planning and delivering exercises. When researching the market, I found that many of the books I came across were either short and superficial, overly complex, academic and of limited practical use, or focused on multi-agency emergency response exercises.’
Chapters
Of the 20 chapters many may be of interest far beyond the BC specialist – such as, a chapter on exercises as ‘educational by design’. Charlie goes over the different styles of learning (visual, kinetic and kinaesthetic) and gives some of the theory behind how we learn. Another; how to add realism to an exercise, whether props or ‘casualties’, or phone calls or simulated social media as an incident (fast) unfolds.
If you’re intending an exercise about a related discipline, whether fire drill or lockdown, you could turn to this book to inform yourself about how to document what happens; the scope and scenario for an exercise – which need thrashing out and putting into agreed words beforehand – who’s leading, whose department is being exercised? Small things (that merit a page) for example are whether or how to name your exercise; and who if anyone ought to umpire it (an outside consultant?!). As an overall framework to bear in mind, the author offers four Ds: design, development, delivery and de-brief.
Once you have a scenario, you come up with a storyboard (hence how long you want an exercise to run matters) and ‘injects’, new things or facts that those taking part in the exercise have to address (or ignore, and keep to priorities?!).
As the book opens by saying, an exercise is ‘usually the final element’ in a larger life cycle of planning, whether for BC or crisis management. It’s different from training, which teaches or refreshes skills; an exercise, rather, is to apply knowledge, to test a plan. Does a policy or process, under pressure, whether of time or around a table, actually work?
Why
The book arguably most valuably goes through why you exercise – to validate those policies, or to further build a team and resilience more generally, or indeed to manage expectations (‘the practical realities of crisis response’); or as part of meeting an international standard, such as ISO 22301 for business continuity management systems. And Charlie’s principles are crisp and wise: an exercise should be simple; appropriate (‘tailored’ to whether someone senior or junior takes part); realistic; ‘a meaningful learning experience’; clearly defined objectives; a challenging enough test; with a structured de-brief; well planned, to justify all the time and effort; and ‘a supportive environment’ where mistakes are allowed.
For a sample chapter visit https://www.koganpage.com/risk-compliance/practical-business-continuity-exercises-9781398628236.
