Preparedness

Run the fire drill bored rather than improvise when the alarm is real.

Key Concept

• Rehearse, document, and test before the emergency owns the clock.
• Level 1: Practice the plan and write it down before the emergency runs the show - like a fire drill before the real alarm.
• Level 2: Practice the plan, write it down, and try it out while you still have time - do not wait until the crisis is already running the show.
• Level 3: Rehearsal while calm beats improvisation while the clock is loud - document steps someone else could run.
• Level 4: Because emergencies compress decisions, prep moves choices upstream - tested runbooks fail less than heroics under smoke.
• Level 5: Rehearse, document, and test before the emergency owns the clock - the handbook minimum is not the same as a practiced team.
• I would rather run the fire drill bored than improvise when the alarm is real.
• Practice the move slowly so you can run it when the clock is loud.
• The rehearsal does not need to be dramatic - walking the checklist once on a slow day counts.

Examples

• We ran our inbound play every Thursday whether we needed it or not - schools run fire drills on sunny Tuesdays so kids are not learning exits during smoke.
• Our restaurant ran the closing checklist on a slow Tuesday; Saturday night's rush was boring because everyone had already walked it once.

Note Relationships