What the guidance and good practice says

Why “Pre-formance” Matters

When analysing crises and control rooms, an internal typo unexpectedly framed an important truth about operational readiness: performance under pressure is shaped long before the incident itself.

Like a chef preparing ingredients, designing workflows and structuring a kitchen team before service begins, effective control room performance depends on preparation, mindset, relationships, clarity and team conditions developed well in advance.

Whether operating an event control room, emergency operation or corporate crisis cell, the work starts long before the incident occurs.

The Human Challenge Inside Control Rooms

Across events, venues and incidents, several recurring human challenges consistently emerge:

• Temporary teams with little shared history or familiarity
• Different organisational cultures and communication styles
• Wide variation in training and baseline competence
• Rapid shifts between low activity and intense pressure
• Siloed information and conflicting priorities
• Stress responses that narrow thinking and reduce collaboration

Control rooms amplify human factors. Technical plans alone cannot compensate for weak communication, unclear expectations or unmanaged stress responses.

What Happens to the Brain Under Pressure?

Under stress, the human brain processes information in a predictable sequence:

Threat → Emotion → Logic

Stimuli are first filtered for threat, then interpreted emotionally before logical reasoning and analysis become fully available.

Under pressure:

• Fight or flight responses dominate
• Logic and learning reduce
• Emotional processing becomes impaired
• Tunnel vision and defensiveness increase

One practical intervention highlighted was the “physiological sigh”:

• Inhale
• Inhale again, deeper
• Slow exhale

This simple technique can help reset the parasympathetic nervous system and restore cognitive control within seconds.

Character and Behaviour in a Crisis

The session explored the HeartStyles Compass model, which separates behaviours into “above the line” and “below the line” responses.

Above the line behaviours:

• Humility
• Courage
• Respect
• Professional openness

Below the line behaviours:

• Fear and withdrawal
• Appeasement and avoidance
• Pride and ego driven control

Under pressure, everyone dips below the line at times. The key is recognising triggers, normalising defensiveness and resetting quickly before negative behaviours ripple across the wider team.

Character is not a soft skill in control rooms. It is operational risk management.

Lessons From Real Incidents

Several major incidents demonstrate how human factors repeatedly influence operational outcomes.

Route 91 Harvest Festival

Key lessons included:

• Overloaded control rooms
• False active shooter reports
• Limited interoperability between agencies
• Poor situational awareness
• Insufficient plans for unforeseen attack scenarios

Manchester Arena Inquiry

Highlighted issues included:

• Failure to escalate public risk information
• Insufficient multi agency exercising
• Poor communication between teams
• Training and equipment shortfalls
• Weak coordination between operators and security

Astroworld

Lessons included:

• Poor visibility of decision making
• Inadequate communications structures
• Confusion over casualty reporting
• Insufficient crowd messaging
• Lack of clearly defined escalation and show stop processes

Across all incidents, technical failures were often compounded by communication breakdowns, unclear authority structures and cognitive overload.

Five Foundations of Human Pre-formance

Five key foundations consistently shape high performing control room teams:

1. People

Understanding who is in the room, their experience levels, fears, communication styles and expectations.

2. Objectives

Clarifying exactly what problem the team is solving and where operational boundaries sit.

3. Roles

Defining responsibilities, interactions and dependencies clearly to avoid confusion during incidents.

4. Culture

Establishing communication discipline, psychological safety, escalation norms and mutual respect.

5. Decision Making

Clarifying thresholds, authority levels and escalation pathways before pressure arrives.

A lack of clarity in any one of these areas creates anxiety, frustration and performance loss.

Human Pre-formance Starts Before Event Day

Improving operational performance begins well before live operations start.

Practical tools include:

• Clear role cards and information requirements
• Indexed operational plans designed for users
• Micro drills and tabletop exercises
• Early stakeholder engagement
• Pre-mortems and scenario walkthroughs
• Shift patterns aligned to operational risk rhythms
• Built in welfare and fatigue management

Human pre-formance is not a moment. It is an ongoing process.

The Reality of Live Operations

Several operational truths consistently emerge:

• Most control room friction stems from assumptions, not incidents
• Teams must form, storm and perform rapidly
• Frontline staff often carry the highest operational burden with the least training
• Logging and record keeping are collective responsibilities
• Situational awareness remains heavily dependent on visibility and co-location

The live operational environment exposes every weakness from the pre-event phase.

The Future of Human Performance Work

The industry is increasingly recognising that psychological, behavioural and relational skills are core operational capabilities rather than optional extras.

Confidence under pressure, communication discipline, stress management and repeatable decision making are becoming central to modern crisis and control room capability.

Understanding Different Team Types

The Emergency Mind Project identifies three common operational team structures:

Intact Teams

Stable groups that work together regularly and build strong trust, shared understanding and predictable performance.

Smash Teams

Teams formed by rapidly combining different organisations or disciplines during emergencies.

These teams provide broad capability but often face communication clashes and misalignment.

Swarm Teams

Highly fluid, rapidly self organising groups that converge around urgent problems in real time.

They offer speed and flexibility but require strong coordination to avoid chaos.

Closing Reflection

The industry is increasingly recognising the psychological and behavioural demands placed on crisis and control room teams.

Technology, procedures and plans remain essential. But ultimately, operational resilience depends on how well people are prepared to think, communicate and perform under pressure.

Because when something goes wrong, the room does not rise to the occasion. It falls to the level of its preparation and its human pre-formance.

What good looks like

• Clear role definitions and escalation pathways
• Structured control room briefings before operations begin
• Teams trained to manage stress and cognitive overload
• Strong communication discipline and shared situational awareness
• Operational plans designed for usability under pressure
• Regular tabletop exercises and micro-drills
• Psychological safety that encourages challenge and escalation
• Fatigue and welfare built into operational planning
• Cross agency collaboration rehearsed before live incidents
• Leadership behaviours that promote humility, clarity and calm decision making

Common mistakes we see

Assuming experienced people automatically form effective teams

Even highly experienced individuals may struggle if they have never worked together before.

Overloading control rooms with information

Too much unstructured information increases confusion and slows decision making.

Failing to rehearse communications protocols

Communication discipline often breaks down first under pressure.

Neglecting frontline personnel

Stewards, gate staff and operational teams frequently receive less training despite carrying significant operational responsibility.

Ignoring stress responses

Tunnel vision, irritability and defensiveness are predictable human responses that must be anticipated and managed.

Unclear authority structures

Confusion over decision making thresholds and escalation responsibilities creates operational paralysis.

Treating human performance as secondary to technical planning

Technology and plans are only effective if teams can apply them coherently during real incidents.

Practical checklist

• Clarify roles, responsibilities and escalation pathways before operations begin
• Review communication protocols and radio discipline
• Conduct tabletop exercises and scenario walkthroughs regularly
• Ensure operational plans are easy to navigate under pressure
• Identify likely cognitive overload points within the control room
• Build welfare and fatigue management into shift planning
• Train supervisors and decision makers in stress processing
• Improve interoperability between agencies and operational teams
• Review information flows and logging responsibilities
• Use pre-mortems to identify likely operational failures in advance
• Encourage challenge, escalation and psychological safety
• Test decision making thresholds before live events

FAQs

What is “human pre-formance”?

Human pre-formance refers to the preparation, mindset, communication and behavioural readiness that shape operational performance before a crisis occurs.

Why do control rooms struggle under pressure?

Stress responses, unclear roles, communication breakdowns and cognitive overload all significantly affect human performance during incidents.

Can technical systems solve these challenges?

Technology helps, but human factors ultimately determine how effectively systems and procedures are applied during live operations.

Why are temporary teams challenging?

People from different organisations often bring different cultures, expectations and communication styles, creating friction unless actively managed.

What is the benefit of exercises and tabletop scenarios?

Exercises improve shared understanding, communication discipline and decision making confidence before live pressure arrives.

What are smash teams and swarm teams?

Smash teams combine multiple existing teams rapidly during crises, while swarm teams are highly fluid groups that self organise around urgent problems in real time.