As many of my readers know, my hobby and interests revolve around the history of the Middle Ages. So it was a real treat to visit the Royal Armory in Madrid, one of the premier collections of armor and weapons in Europe. There were some amazing examples of the armor makers art and I spent quite some time examining them. There was just one thing a bit troubling - none of it (well, most of it) was real.
Now, I'm not knocking the Royal Armory. The exhibit is amazing and worth seeing. However, my interest is in munitions grade armor - the stuff you could fight in. On display were suits of parade armor and others designed for jousting, a very specific type of mock combat. This type of armor was never intended to be used in combat. Indeed, they would have offered some serious disadvantages to the fighter if they were so used.
So here's the question for you: is your emergency plan "munitions grade" of only for parade?
One of the problems I see when I assess emergency plans is that many of them are written for review by a higher authority. Like parade armor, they really won't work well when relied on in a crisis. The planners make the mistake of focusing on requirements rather than on reality, forgetting that, in many cases, the "requirements" are actually guidelines.
An effective plan starts with the needs of the organization and builds out, incorporating guidelines as necessary and using them as a means of quality control. It doesn't start with the guidelines and "filling the blanks".
The true purpose of medieval armor was to give a warrior an advantage in a crisis. It's the same for the emergency plan. If your plan looks good and meets all requirements but cannot be used in a crisis, it's like parade armor. It looks really good but it won't give you an edge in surviving a crisis.
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