HotSeat HQ
Live crisis exercises that react to what your team decides.
Most crisis exercises still run off slides and printed injects. The story can't react, nobody keeps a clean record, and the lessons fade within a week. HotSeat HQ runs the exercise live: time moves, information arrives in pieces, and every decision and action is captured as it happens.
See how it worksJoin the pilot
Who it's for
- OrganisationsTest your crisis team regularly without hiring an outside facilitator every time. Set up your people, sites and plans once, then run a fresh exercise whenever you need one.
- ConsultantsRun exercises for many clients from one login, with each client's profile and history kept separate, and hand over a debrief and playbook at the end.
How it works
- Set up onceAdd your people and their crisis roles, sites, key systems, suppliers and plans. The regulators for your sector and state are matched for you.
- Plan the exercisePick a scenario, the team's maturity and how long you have. You get a run plan you can review and change.
- Run it liveThe projector shows the room what is happening, you steer from a private control screen, and the scribe logs decisions and actions.
- DebriefEverything that happened becomes a debrief you can print, save as a PDF or export as a spreadsheet, and a playbook to keep for a real incident.
What's inside
- Five ready-made scenariosRansomware, data breach, workplace siege, work road crash and severe weather (flood, bushfire or cyclone). Each branches on the team's decisions and holds back facts they wouldn't know yet.
- Real-time pressureA scenario clock with time jumps, surprise curveballs, and an optional twist that takes one team member out at random.
- Built around your teamMaturity levels, breaks, an overnight fatigue roster, the team's update rhythm, and stand-ins for anyone away.
- Scribe and action boardActions with an owner and due time, with a prompt when they fall due. Every scenario checks whether the team used its own plan.
- A playbook from every exerciseTurn what the team did into a checklist of steps, owners, deadlines and gaps to fix. The next exercise checks the team against it.
- Call-out testAlert key staff at realistic odd hours and record how fast each person acknowledges.
- Rehearse on your ownPractise a scenario alone with a pretend team and a sped-up clock before you run it for real.
Try it with your team
HotSeat HQ is in its pilot phase and accounts are by invitation. Tell us a little about your organisation and we'll be in touch.