Exercise progress is an intermediate state, not a conclusion

Suppose an organization compares two exercise rounds and finds clearly more convincing decision work in the second. Management then declares the exercise programme complete: goal reached, funds released. At that point a progress finding is being mistaken for proof of capability.

In my exploratory conference manuscript “The Decision Corridor: An Exploratory Rubric for Reviewing Temporal Actionability in Crisis Management Team Decisions” (Rico Kerstan, version dated 29 May 2026), I report such round-over-round changes as a structured review finding. Each decision episode is reviewed for whether it starts early enough, fits the problem and clearly assigns responsibilities and tasks. When more episodes in a round meet these review criteria, that is progress under exercise conditions. The review does not establish, however, that the teams now possess a transferable capability.

A result from my work on resilience assessment fits this framing. In our published working paper “Bewertung von organisationaler Krisen-Resilienz anhand des Resilienzrisikoreifegrades” (Rico Kerstan and André Röhl, NBS Northern Business School Hamburg, No. 1/2025; the title refers to assessing the crisis resilience of an organization through a graduated classification of its crisis preparedness), we describe assessment as a cycle: after a defined period, a reassessment makes progress visible, checks the effectiveness of measures and sets new priorities. Progress in this cycle is an intermediate state of development.

For the learning decision after an exercise series, I derive the following: whether the series continues depends on the exercise objective and completion criterion defined in advance. If the objective is not yet met, the next round targets the remaining gap, perhaps a different scenario segment or a different capability. The design states in advance what evidence would be sufficient to end the series. Such a completion criterion also protects against the opposite, exercising out of habit. The resource decision becomes explicit rather than treating improvement alone as a reason to release resources.

For the next exercise planning, I recommend documenting progress and the completion criterion together. Together they justify the decision to continue the series or to end it.