I’ll tell you exactly when you last took this seriously.
Every crisis plan is a fossil record. The scenarios you chose reveal what kept you up at night in the year it was written. The spokesperson list tells me who was in charge then, some of whom have probably left. The platform references tell me whether you were still calling Twitter “Twitter.” The holding statements tell me whether your legal team has loosened up since the last administration.
I pulled one out of a storage closet last year — the client had no idea it existed until I asked. The designated social media spokesperson had left the organization three years earlier. The section on “managing online complaints” referenced a platform nobody in the room recognized. The media contact list had fax numbers.
That wasn’t incorrect. I mean it… there were fax numbers.
Here’s what bothers me about this: a crisis plan FEELS like a deliverable. It’s a physical object. It makes leadership feel responsible. It gets presented to the board, filed, and then quietly forgotten. Somewhere in that process, the organization decided that having the binder was the same thing as being prepared.
It isn’t. Preparation is a living thing. It gets updated when platforms change, when people leave, when your risk profile shifts. And it gets tested before the test is real. A plan that’s never been opened, run through, or stress-tested isn’t a safety net. It’s a trap — because it creates confidence you haven’t earned, in situations that punish overconfidence fast.
When’s the last time someone in your organization actually opened yours?
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