For any organization, validating their Business Continuity, Crisis Management, IT Disaster Recovery Plan and Emergency Response Plans - among others - it paramount. The problem often encountered due to resource availability, time and costs, is that many organizations rely on the Tabletop exercise to validate their protocols. Thought valuable, an organization must see beyond the Tabletop. We speak with Master Exercise Planner (MEP) and recent DRJ Fall 2018 conference speaker, Joe Bechtold, who will talk about different kinds of exercises and the value they provide organizations. Joe will also talk to use about how to design an exercise from determing the goals and objectives to how we evaluate activities during the exercise to documenting exercise findings. Joe will provide us with ideas and insight, as to how we can improve our validation capabilities and ensure our exercises provide the best value to our organization.