Crisis training – it can of course be a mixed bag.
I mean, there’s the hostile environment session where, yelled at by a guy in a keffiyeh and desert fatigues – with my face to the floor – an abduction role-play in a suburban church hall doesn’t remotely resemble Mogadishu. Or take NATO’s desk-top option, where an actor, of sorts, in his warlord guise demands terms via a screen beside a mock-up map; an island, say Spitsbergen, turned upside down and moved to sunnier latitudes.
Mention Triton and I have you thinking of the Greek trumpeter of the sea. But, ancient messengers and mermaids aside, Triton to us means training.
Our Triton platform simulates multiple social media streams, as a fictional outside world reacts while you grapple with an incident scenario.
So Triton is a messenger, or perhaps better put, tests the messenger. Participants, put under pressure in an hour or a day, must prioritise and work quickly as a team to figure out what should be noted, responded to or ignored in the wall of chatter. And you might be forgiven for wanting to shoot the messenger by the time the course ends.
As mythology notes: Triton drowned Misenus in the surf after he ‘…challenged the gods to play as well as he’. His folly, blowing into a sea shell, an epiphany for the quick-fingered on Twitter.
Triton tests teamwork. It isn’t a competition as such. We prefer you learn, rather than win. There’s no blood on the carpet; no one drowns. But Triton does take you out of your operational bubble, as it rapidly enlightens you on public opinion. Players must rally to regain the narrative. Or at least do their utmost.
This might be your operations or senior team, or teams joining together. All have experienced this and survived to tell the tale – with positive feedback.
“Very authentic,” a fleet director tells me, having taken 60+ senior seafarers through a course simulating a collision off the Cape Verde Islands. Gods they were not, but play like the best of ‘em, they did.
Many shipping incidents can surface first on social media. It isn’t so surprising that a watch-keeper takes a call from Reuters before a DPA is even aware – or awake. Anything awry that the public has sight of – from the beach or a passing ferry – is posted in seconds. That’s if it hasn’t already been posted by the crew.
The tempo of reaction is central to Triton’s simulation, as public interaction races ahead of events. Sooner or later a company must decide to react.
Triton is the training space where you can have a go. Yes, you strive to get things right. But training also provides the space to make those mistakes in rehearsal; to get the response wrong whilst crucially understanding why.
Navigate Response, along with its network of partners, runs the Triton platform providing rigorous communications training to the maritime and offshore sectors. With its agility and diversity, the platform is also used by others, from emergency fire services to an opera house.
Considering a company’s reputation can be shredded in a morning, as online opinions overtake events in the real world, learning from errors made in a training session could be your best decision.
To find out more visit www.navigateresponse.com/triton or www.tritonsocialsimulator.com
