When people think about crisis planning, they tend to focus on the end result – a detailed document that sets out scenarios, a clear process and a set of communications templates ready to go. But our my experience, the quality of any crisis plan is almost entirely determined before you get anywhere near writing it.
Over the years, we’ve worked with organisations across a range of sectors, and one thing is consistently true – the conversations you have at the outset determine how well your plan will stand up under scrutiny.
That’s why we put so much emphasis on a structured discovery phase as the foundation of any effective crisis communications planning process.
Getting the right people in the room
One of the first things we focus on is making sure we’re speaking to the right people. A crisis response rarely sits neatly within one function. It cuts across leadership, operations, communications, IT, HR and legal. If you only speak to one part of the business, you’ll only ever get part of the picture.
We always want to hear from those who will be involved in both decision-making and front-line – the people who will have to act quickly, often with incomplete information, when something happens. That mix of perspectives is important because it’s where you start to see how aligned, or otherwise, the organisation really is.
Framing the conversation properly
The tone of these sessions matters. If it feels like an audit, people tend to default to best case answers, covering what should happen, rather than what would probably happen in reality.
Once you create that space, the conversation becomes far more useful and far more honest. We always stress that there are no right or wrong answers, and that we’re looking to identify where things are clear, and where there may be gaps or grey areas so we can build a plan that works in practice.
It’s important to cover areas of potential reputational risk (what keeps them awake at night) and the scenarios that would most impact the business’ reputation, as well as understanding internal and external audiences, and existing and potential channels of communication.
Exploring how things actually work
At the heart of any discovery session is a simple objective to understand how the business would respond if a serious issue landed tomorrow. That usually means exploring a few key areas.
Firstly, how risks are currently identified and managed. Most organisations will have some form of risk register or business continuity planning in place, but it’s important to understand how actively these are used and how connected they are to communications.
Then, how issues are escalated. Who gets involved first? At what point does something become a ‘crisis’? And how quickly does information reach the people who need to act?
From there, we spend time on decision-making. Who ultimately owns a crisis? Who needs to be consulted? And, crucially, who signs off communications? This is often where bottlenecks emerge which can seriously hinder the ability of an organisation to get ahead of a crisis situation and own the narrative.
One question I often come back to during these sessions is: if a major issue broke tomorrow, where would you struggle most? And the answers are rarely about a lack of intent or capability. More often, they come down to clarity of roles and responsibilities, alignment of different departments.
Those are the things a good discovery process is designed to uncover and means that operational fixes can be made while the sun is shining.
From conversation to a plan that works
The output of all of this is a plan that reflects how the organisation actually operates. One that is clear on governance, realistic about decision-making, and practical in terms of how communication will happen under pressure.
The organisations that handle crises best aren’t the ones with the most detailed documents sitting on a shelf. They’re the ones that have taken the time to ask the right questions upfront and to answer them honestly.
And that always starts with a good conversation.
