Syndicates, not individuals
NCALT reports on collective decisions and organisational patterns. Named delegates are not ranked or assessed.
The Hydra methodology
Difficult decisions.Safe enough to examine.
Hydra places syndicates inside the same unfolding situation, captures what each group decides and why, then uses facilitated comparison to turn experience into organisational evidence.
How it works
From scenario to report.
The technology supports the experience. The learning comes from how syndicates decide, articulate their rationale and examine different approaches together.
- 01
Enter the scenario
Delegates enter a realistic role and receive an unfolding situation through documents, audio, video, calls, role-play and timed injects.
- 02
Work as syndicates
Small groups work independently on the same problem. The unit of learning is the syndicate’s collective reasoning—not an individual score.
- 03
Show the working
Each syndicate records what it decided and the rationale behind it, creating a contemporaneous decision log rather than a retrospective story.
- 04
Pause and compare
Plenary sessions bring syndicates together with trained facilitators and subject-matter experts to examine different decisions and assumptions.
- 05
Turn learning into evidence
Decision logs, exercise records and structured review feed the Decision Lab Report: strengths, gaps, risks and recommended actions.
Design principles
Psychological safety with operational rigour.
Safe learning, no assessment
The exercise creates permission to test judgement, expose uncertainty and learn from difficult choices without personal penalty.
Defensible decisions
Recording both the decision and its rationale makes assumptions visible and supports reflective, evidence-based learning.
Facilitated, not scripted
A trained control room manages pace and injects in response to the syndicates while preserving the reality of the scenario.
Method and delivery
Hydra structure. Presence scale.
Hydra is the immersive exercise method: small syndicates work through an unfolding event, record decisions and rationale, and compare their approaches in plenary.
A typical physical Hydra suite runs four or five syndicates of five or six people.Presence complements suite delivery by making it straightforward to involve more syndicates, connect participants in different locations and compare a broader range of organisational decisions in one exercise.
10kV remains a distinct debriefing method. It uses anonymous individual input to remove rank barriers and enable candid discussion; it should not be described as the same process as Hydra.
Evidence and current use
Further reading.
- Hydra Immersive Learning presentation, 2024Syndicates, decision logs, plenary review and the safe, non-assessment environment.↗
- Group decision-making research using HydraPeer-reviewed research into real-time group decisions in reproducible major-incident simulations.↗
- College of Policing immersive learningCurrent operational use of Hydra for realistic force-incident-management training.↗
- Hydra FoundationMethodology history, facilitator accreditation, Presence and emergency-services use.↗
Next decision
See what the methodology produces.
Request a sample Decision Lab Report and a demonstration of the syndicate exercise workflow behind it.