Most situations look ordinary right up to the moment they are not.
We read the world through the lenses of what we expect to see. That works well as long as the situation behaves the way it usually does. It works less well in the minutes when something is beginning to change and nothing has yet gone visibly wrong. We train, develop and assess the people that have to notice that shift while it is still happening. It is e-training, not e-learning: nothing to read, nothing to memorise, only situations to read.
Start a conversationOrdinary. Everything is where it usually is, and nothing is asking for attention.
Changing. One detail has moved out of place. Most people miss it the first time.
The situation is rarely the surprise. The recognition is.
When people are asked afterwards what happened, they can usually point to the moment things turned. What they could not do at the time was see it as a turning point, because it looked like a slightly unusual version of something familiar. Under pressure, attention narrows, interpretation leans on what we already believe, and decisions follow from an understanding that may no longer fit the room we are standing in.
Training has traditionally answered this with procedures: what to do once the situation is defined. Self Simula works one step earlier, on the perception and the judgement that define it.
What self-simulation means.
Simulation has usually meant simulating the world. Self-simulation means simulating the person in it.
Most simulation is built to model things: a structure under load, a fluid through a pipe, a machine before it is made. The person looking at the model is outside it. Self-simulation turns that around. The object of the exercise is the individual's own perception and judgement — what they notice, how they interpret it, and what they decide — rehearsed against situations that have not happened yet, so that the first real encounter is not the first encounter.
That is why the name begins with the word it does. The simulation is not of a place or a process but of the person: their own way of seeing, individually, in the environment they actually work in. Everything on this page follows from that — the scenes are built from the individual's own context, the questions are asked of the individual, and the measurement is of what the individual noticed.
Four questions, asked in the same order, in every scene.
PERCEIVE
What do you actually see? Not what the scene is about, but which details are present. This is where most errors begin: the cue was there, and it was not noticed.
UNDERSTAND
What does it mean? Two scenes can contain almost the same elements and mean entirely different things. Learning to tell them apart is the core of the training.
DECIDE
What happens next, and what do you do about it? The decision is only as good as the understanding it rests on.
ADAPT
What changes when new information arrives? The ability to let go of a first reading is as important as the ability to form it.
The structure follows established research on situational awareness and on how experienced people recognise patterns and decide under time pressure. Each scene is scored against the same levels, so the measurement is built into the training rather than added as a test at the end. Over time this gives an organisation something it rarely has: a picture of what its people notice, and what they consistently miss.
In one, the situation is developing into something that requires action. In the other, it is not. The two look alike, because in real life they do.
Validated by people who have stood in the room.
Our method is validated by people who have worked in the situations where they need to perform. That validation is not a final check; it is where the value lies. A method is only useful if someone who knows the environment recognises it as true.
Situational awareness, built one level at a time.
Self Simula trains perception and judgement through short, concrete scenes. Each scene is read in the same three levels, and each level depends on the one before it. The example below is simplified.
What is there, what does it mean, and what happens next?
- SA 1 · PerceptionWhat is there?Two people seated, one seat empty, and one person standing apart, close to the exit.
- SA 2 · ComprehensionWhat does it mean?The person standing has left their place and separated from the others. Set against how this setting normally looks, that is a deviation.
- SA 3 · ProjectionWhat happens next?If the movement continues, the situation will develop within minutes. This is the point where acting still costs little.
of organisations will require skills assessments where no AI is allowed to help.
Gartner expects the erosion of critical-thinking skills through generative AI to push half of all organisations to test their people's judgement without AI assistance. Earlier, it had already placed simulation-based training among its strategic technology trends, forecasting that adoption among large businesses in training and simulation would rise from under one per cent to more than a third in two years.
Both point to the same ability: a person's own reading of a situation, with nothing between them and it. That is what self-simulation trains.
One method, three uses.
Recognition training in scenes from your own environment. Individual, self-administered, at scale — on a screen or in a headset. Same questions, same scoring, every time.
The same scenes as a mirror for teams and leaders: what the group notices, what it consistently misses, and where understanding breaks down even when perception was right. Used in leadership development and in the work of crisis and preparedness teams.
The next step takes the method out of the prepared scene and closer to the situation as it actually unfolds, so that recognition is practised under conditions that come nearer to the real thing. It builds on the same foundation and the same four questions as the rest of Self Simula. The work is being developed together with partner organisations, and we will say more about it when it is ready.
For anyone who has to read a situation before they can act.
Industry
Recognising the difference between a deviation that can wait and one that cannot, on the floor and in the control room.
Offshore oil and gas
Noticing the small deviations in process, weather or behaviour that tend to come before an incident on an installation.
Maritime
Crews on the bridge and on deck who have to pick up early signs of change in conditions, equipment or people, often far from outside help.
Transport
Drivers, conductors and station staff who have seconds to read a passenger, a platform or a queue — and who are often alone when they do.
Health
Reading a patient, a relative, a waiting room; distinguishing distress from threat.
Schools
Seeing the early stages of a situation among pupils, or with a visitor, before it becomes an incident.
Public services
Front-line staff who meet the public in situations that can turn quickly, and who are expected to make the call alone.
Emergency services
Arriving at a scene and reading it before the situation reads you; recognising what is already in motion, not only what is visible.
Law enforcement
Officers who must judge, often within seconds and on incomplete information, whether a situation is settling or escalating.
Military
Reading environments where intent is unclear and a wrong interpretation is costly, from the patrol to the headquarters.
Security and reception
The first person a visitor meets, and the last one who can still decide whether the situation stays ordinary.
Formula 1 and sport
Drivers, athletes and teams whose performance depends on reading a situation faster than the opponent, and adapting when it changes.
Leadership and crisis teams
Managers who must recognise, from fragments, that a workplace issue is turning into something the organisation has to handle as a crisis.
These are examples, not limits. The method applies wherever a few seconds of prior recognition change what a person does next — a front desk, a ward, a shop floor, a control room, a road tunnel a driver is shown before entering it.
What we want to achieve.
We want people to meet difficult situations they have, in a sense, already seen. Not because they were told what to do, but because they have practised looking at their own environment closely enough to notice when it is beginning to change — and have learned what that change tends to mean.
The ambition is simple to state and hard to do: that the first time someone recognises a situation is not the first time they are in it.
Self Simula is developed with support from Innovation Norway, and builds on research in work and organisational psychology, situational awareness and naturalistic decision-making.
Developed in collaboration with Innovation Norway, industry partners and Google.
Ole André Bråten
Specialist in work and organisational psychology, academic author and researcher on human factors. Bråten holds an MPhil in work and organisational psychology with a specialisation in cognitive psychology, and his expertise lies in how the brain perceives, interprets and makes sense of what is happening around us. He has further specialised in decision-making under pressure and uncertainty, scenario and exercise design, and VR and immersive learning. His background spans management consulting, military, law enforcement and academia, and he has worked nationally and internationally at the intersection of safety, conflict and crisis management. His experience includes international operations for the United Nations in South Lebanon and work connected to NATO.
He has long experience with simulation systems: as a police superintendent and assistant professor at the Norwegian Police University College, he spent five years teaching in the college's firearms training simulator, and he has since developed simulations for larger organisations using both e-training and XR technology. Self Simula grew out of that work and out of a long-standing interest in developing new models and platforms for training and organisational development.
Anette Falkum
Anette has spearheaded the innovation of the Self Simula method. As a female entrepreneur she worked alongside Google in the WeStart incubator, launched by SHEconomy together with the Google Greenhouse initiative as Norway's premier programme for female entrepreneurs and business owners. Self Simula was selected for the intensive eight-week incubation programme, led by some of Norway's most respected educators and entrepreneurship experts, with specialist work on business and idea validation, legal frameworks, economic modelling, storytelling and pitching, sales strategies, digital customer acquisition and investment preparation.
Falkum has a background in healthcare and leadership, with clinical and management experience in acute care and specialist hospital services at Oslo University Hospital. She was educated at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, and is an academic author. Her most recent co-authored book focuses on risk assessment and decision-making in law enforcement. Since 2010, she has worked full-time with innovation and organisational development.
See what your people are missing.
Start with one conversation about your environment and the situations that matter most to you. We will show you how those situations can be turned into scenes, and what the first results could tell you about where recognition comes too late today.
We work with organisations, research partners and public bodies who want their people to see more, earlier. No preparation is needed; a few lines about your organisation is enough to begin.
