The Theater of Crisis Planning

Most crisis plans are designed to make boards feel comfortable, not to function under pressure. They're comprehensive documents that tick boxes for governance committees but fall apart the moment real stress hits the organization.

These plans typically include exhaustive scenario lists (product recall, cyber attack, executive misconduct, natural disaster, and twenty more), detailed contact trees with people who no longer work there, and process flowcharts that require calm, linear thinking during moments of chaos.

They look impressive in board presentations. They're useless at 2am when your CEO's phone is ringing with calls from the Financial Times.

What Actually Happens During a Crisis

Real crises don't unfold like the scenarios in your planning documents. They're messy, fast-moving, and full of unknowns.

Information comes in fragments and contradictions. The legal team says one thing, operations says another, and nobody has the full picture. People who should be available aren't. Technology fails. Time compresses. Pressure builds.

In this environment, nobody's going to read your 40-page document. Nobody's going to follow your seven-step decision-making process. Nobody's going to consult the detailed stakeholder matrix you spent weeks developing.

What people need is absolute clarity on three things: who decides, what we say, and who says it.

Everything else is noise.

The Plans That Actually Work

We've seen crisis plans that function under pressure. They share common characteristics, and none of them look like traditional crisis manuals.

They're Simple

The best crisis plan we've encountered was four pages long. Page one: who to call and in what order. Page two: decision-making authority and approval process. Page three: core holding statements for different scenarios. Page four: key stakeholder contacts and communication channels.

That's it. No lengthy scenarios. No theoretical frameworks. No process diagrams that require interpretation.

When crisis hit, the leadership team had absolute clarity on roles and process within minutes. They could focus on strategy and execution rather than figuring out how their own plan worked.

They're Current

A crisis plan that hasn't been updated in 18 months is already outdated. People have changed roles. Contact details have changed. Stakeholder landscapes have shifted. Regulatory environments have evolved.

Organizations with effective plans treat them as living documents. They review quarterly, update immediately when key personnel change, and test regularly to identify gaps.

They're Tested

The only way to know if your plan works is to stress-test it under conditions that simulate real pressure.

We run crisis simulations for clients that go beyond tabletop exercises. We introduce time pressure, conflicting information, absent decision-makers, and cascading complications. We make people actually draft statements, make actual decisions, and deal with actual ambiguity.

Almost always, the first simulation exposes critical gaps: unclear authority, missing contact information, unrealistic processes, or assumptions that don't hold under pressure.

The organizations that take testing seriously fix these gaps before they face real crises. The ones that don't discover them at the worst possible moment.

They're Accessible

Your crisis plan needs to be somewhere people can find it instantly, from anywhere, at any time. Not on a shared drive that requires VPN access. Not in a physical binder in someone's office. Not as a PDF attachment in an email from two years ago.

Cloud-based, mobile-accessible, and bookmarked on every key person's device. If your crisis team can't access the plan within 60 seconds of needing it, you don't have a functioning plan.

The Human Factor

Even the best-designed plan fails if people don't know their roles or haven't practiced executing them.

We worked with an organization whose crisis plan clearly designated their General Counsel as the crisis lead. Sensible choice on paper. In practice, the GC was conflict-averse, slow to make decisions, and prioritized legal protection over communications strategy.

When crisis hit, the plan said one thing but organizational dynamics created a different reality. Delays mounted. Mixed messages emerged. The situation worsened.

The plan hadn't accounted for personality, leadership style, or real-world decision-making under stress.

What You Actually Need

Strip your crisis planning back to essentials:

Clear governance. Who has authority to make decisions? Who must be consulted? Who approves external statements? Who speaks to media, investors, employees, regulators? No ambiguity, no shared authority, no consultation processes that slow everything down.

Pre-approved frameworks. You can't pre-write statements for every scenario, but you can develop frameworks for different types of crises. What's our position if allegations are true? If they're false? If we're still investigating? Having these frameworks ready saves hours of drafting under pressure.

Stakeholder intelligence. Who are our critical stakeholders for different crisis types? What are their likely concerns? What channels do we use to reach them? What's the sequence of communication? This thinking needs to happen before crisis hits, not during it.

Tested muscle memory. People need to have practiced their crisis roles enough that the basic mechanics are automatic. Decision-making processes, statement approval, stakeholder coordination—these should feel familiar, not novel, when pressure hits.

Rapid escalation triggers. What signals indicate a situation is escalating into crisis territory? What activates your crisis protocols? Clear triggers prevent delayed response and the "wait and see" paralysis that makes situations worse.

The Real Test

Your crisis communications plan will be tested eventually. The question is whether it helps or hinders when that moment comes.

A good plan doesn't eliminate stress, uncertainty, or difficult decisions. It creates clarity on roles, processes, and authority so that your team can focus on strategy and stakeholder management rather than figuring out how to operate.

If your current plan is longer than 10 pages, hasn't been updated this year, or hasn't been tested under realistic pressure, you probably don't have a plan that will work when it matters.

You have a document designed to satisfy governance requirements, not one designed to function under crisis conditions.

Making Your Plan Work

If you're reviewing your crisis plan after reading this, ask these questions:

Can someone access this plan from their phone at midnight? If not, fix accessibility first.

Could a new leader step into a crisis role and understand their responsibilities within five minutes of reading the plan? If not, simplify ruthlessly.

When did we last test this plan under realistic pressure? If it's been more than six months, schedule a simulation.

Does this plan reflect our current organization, stakeholders, and risk landscape? If not, update immediately.

Will people actually use this plan during a crisis, or will they improvise because it's too complicated? If they'll improvise, you need a different plan.

Conclusion

Crisis planning isn't about creating comprehensive documents that cover every scenario. It's about giving your team absolute clarity on roles, authority, and process so they can focus on the strategic and stakeholder challenges that actually matter.

The best crisis communications plan is the one you can execute under pressure, not the one that looks most impressive in a board pack.