Requirements for emergency management training from a ‘passion for failures’ perspective

Swedish municipalities are stimulated to conduct emergency management exercises in addition to developing crisis plans. These exercises tend to be grounded in an instrumental philosophy. There is too much focus on doing the exercise and too little attention for the implementation of lessons learned afterwards. A common experience is that the same ‘mistakes’ are discovered again and again in yearly exercises. Furthermore there is a paradoxical balance between empowering the organization in its learning process (positive feedback) and revealing the failures (negative feedback). In this paper we reflect on the learning process in a Swedish municipality in 2006 where two emergency management exercises were held and where a minor and a major crisis occurred during the year. We argue that the longitudinal learning process should be the focus in stead of ad hoc exercises. In addition we develop some requirements for emergency management training from a ‘passion for failures’ perspective.