Chapter 4
Crisis Training

Congratulations on writing your first crisis plan (or improving the one your organization already had in place). The good news is you’ve taken an important step in crisis management. The bad news is you’re not finished.

A plan is only as good as your ability to put it into action. And that requires training.

A crisis plan that gets written, reviewed, and everyone nods their head and says it’s good—and then it gets put on a shelf and nobody looks at it again—is an exercise in futility.

I guarantee that any plan you write that doesn’t lead to implementation training will fall to pieces during a crisis. Some team members will follow it, and some won’t, which will lead to confusion, conflict, and generally lousy crisis response. Plus a negative reaction from a lot of your stakeholders. So commit to educating your team about the plan you’ve written, and training them on how to implement it.