Strategic leaders — those who sit at the apex of organizations and have primary responsibility for charting the course and achieving positive short and long term results for their various constituencies — play a crucial role in crisis situations. It is increasingly recognized that they, like other key players in crisis management and societal (homeland) security need to be prepared for this responsibility and that training and exercises are a fundamental part of this preparation. While significant attention in recent decades has been devoted to developing techniques and designs for operational training and exercises, rather less attention and ink have been devoted to problems of designing crisis management training and exercises for strategic level leaders in governmental organizations — the focus of this report.
This publication is a result of a unique partnership between academic, private sector, and governmental experts from the United States and Sweden. It was developed through a series of collaborative bilateral workshops held in Stockholm and Washington, D.C. during 2013 and 2014.