Your crisis communications plan needs to be grab-and-go

If a stranger walked in tomorrow and had to use it under pressure, would it actually work?

Picture this. Your communications manager is on vacation. An emergency is unfolding. Someone hands you a binder and a red vest.

Quick questions: Does anyone know the laptop login? Is there a digital copy of the plan — one with hyperlinks to actual templates? Where is the media contact list with cell numbers, not just titles? Who manages the social media accounts and what are the login credentials? Does anyone have the fire chief’s number? The director of operations? Even their names would help.

Four reporters are outside waiting for a statement. You have about 20 minutes. The plan is 44 pages long and you have not read a single one of them.

This is not a hypothetical. It has happened. More than once.

A crisis communications plan that lives in a binder, gets updated once every few years, and reads like a governance philosophy paper is not a plan — it is a liability. In a real emergency, people are stressed, time is short, and whoever picks up that binder may be brand new to the role, filling in last minute, or simply the only person available.

Your plan needs to work for that person on the worst day they have had in a while.

That means it needs passwords — or at minimum, clear instructions for where to find them securely. It needs a contact list with actual cell numbers. It needs templates that are ready to fill in, not just described in the abstract. It needs to tell someone what to do in the first 20 minutes, not just what good crisis communications looks like in theory.

It also needs to account for the backup to the backup. Your CAO’s executive assistant is wonderful. But what happens when she leaves and the new person has been in the role for two weeks? What happens when your communications manager is unreachable and so is the deputy? These are not edge cases — they are Tuesday.

Review your plan and imagine a capable but completely unfamiliar staff member trying to use it under real pressure. Walk through it step by step. If they would get stuck, your plan has gaps. If the answer to any key question is “ask so-and-so,” that is not a plan — that is a dependency.

There is also a significant opportunity here. AI tools are changing what is possible in crisis response. Imagine a system trained on your own crisis plan and policies that can draft a first news release in under a minute, flag that a Tier 2 emergency requires CAO sign-off, and prompt you to also draft the council email, the social post, and the key messages for the mayor — because it already knows what a Tier 2 event requires. That is not science fiction. It is available now.

But none of that helps if your foundational plan is not solid. Start with the binder. Then build from there.

Six things you can do right now

1. Print your crisis plan and hand it to someone unfamiliar with your organization. Ask them what they need to do first. Then ask them to find the media contact list, a news release template, and the social media login. Time them. That exercise will tell you everything you need to know.
2. Create a one-page “first 20 minutes” checklist and put it at the front of your plan. Who calls whom. What gets drafted. Who signs off. Where the templates live. Everything a stressed person needs without having to read 44 pages.
3. Store passwords and login credentials in a secure, accessible location — not in someone’s head, not in an email from 2019, and not on a sticky note on a monitor. Decide now where that is and document it in the plan.
4. Identify who has signing authority for communications when your primary and secondary contacts are both unavailable. Write it down. Vagueness in this area will cost you time you do not have.
5. Schedule a plan review at least once a year — more if there has been significant staff turnover. A plan that reflects last year’s team and last year’s tools is not a current plan.
6. Do a tabletop exercise once a year. Do it.