Planning in the middle of a crisis is a bad strategy. Incident communication requires both solid preparation and thorough follow-up. Here’s how.
Most incidents don’t start dramatically. They usually start on an ordinary Monday morning. You walk into the office with a coffee in your hand, and someone says: “Something’s wrong.” They’re not sure how serious it is yet, only that it doesn’t look right and that it probably shouldn’t wait.
And almost immediately, the questions start coming:
These are good questions. Necessary questions. The problem is that this is entirely too late to ask them.
You can’t plan communication in the middle of an incident. When something goes wrong, time behaves differently.
Minutes feel shorter. Slack is on fire. Information arrives incomplete. People interpret silence as meaning. And under pressure, even experienced professionals revert to habit rather than strategy. That’s why communication during incidents can’t be improvised.
If your organisation has to start discussing roles, authority, or messaging after something has already happened, you’re not managing the incident. You’re reacting to it.
And reactions take up valuable time. Expensive time. Time that you just don’t have.
What you put in place before an incident largely decides how much control you’ll have later. And this is the part people so often forget. This isn’t about having more documents. It’s about removing uncertainty.
Someone needs to know who has the mandate to speak. Not who can, but who should. In a crisis, unclear communication isn’t a communications problem. It’s a leadership problem. A leadership problem that can spiral very quickly.
Equally important is whether people feel safe speaking up early. Most incidents are discovered by employees long before they become “incidents.”
If people hesitate because they’re afraid of consequences, valuable time disappears quietly.
We also tend to practice the wrong things. Organisations are often very good at testing technical things. We test system recovery procedures, technical root cause analyses, and data forensics. But we’re far less practiced in the human aspects, such as decision making under uncertainty. Communication, prioritisation, and coordination under pressure are skills, and skills need to be exercised.
And finally, external communication shouldn’t be invented on the fly. Knowing who needs to be informed, in what order, and at what level of detail matters more than having the perfect wording. Silence speaks louder than words, often more clearly than you intended or imagined.
Once something is actively happening, the goal changes. This is no longer the time for analysis. It’s the time for execution.
Someone always suggests, “Let’s wait until we know more.” Trust me when I say this: don’t listen to that guy. Waiting until you have complete information rarely works. It’s usually better to communicate early and clearly, even if that means acknowledging uncertainty. Say what you know, what you don’t know, and when the next update will come. That creates stability in an otherwise unstable situation.
Messages also need coordination. Not everyone needs all information at all times, but everyone needs to know where decisions come from. Conflicting messages damage trust far faster than incomplete ones.
Employees deserve particular attention here. They are information sources, representatives of the organisation, and unintentionally potential leakage points. When internal communication is missing, rumours take over. And if people learn about their own organisation through the media first, we have already lost control of the narrative.
Technology is great. I love technology. Automation brings speed and consistency. It saves us time. I don’t fault people for trying to use it to solve one of the most difficult tasks during an incident. I honestly don’t.
But trust isn’t built through tools. It’s built through human communication, context, empathy, and clarity.
And this is why it is critical that communication remains human. Automated responses aren’t what’s needed to reassure affected parties that you have the overview and the bandwidth to handle this incident properly and securely.
Crisis handling isn’t just information sharing. It’s leadership under pressure.
The forgotten part of the incident. Incidents often leave us feeling uncomfortable, tense, and stressed. So, when the immediate stress fades, it’s tempting to move on quickly. It becomes a taboo topic, the incident that shall not be named.
Don’t.
This phase determines whether the next incident will be handled better or worse than the one you were just in. And what are we doing here if we are not trying to improve things?
A proper review should never be about blame. The important questions aren’t who made a mistake, but what conditions made that decision reasonable at the time. What assumptions failed? What information was missing? Examine what went well, even what went exceptionally well. What can be learned from those? Can the successful aspects be replicated elsewhere?
Be thorough. Because learning the wrong lesson can be more dangerous than learning nothing at all.
Transparency also matters after an incident, but let’s be clear. I am not saying that everyone should go about sharing everything with anyone who is willing to listen. But be as transparent as you can. Acknowledge what went wrong and explain what will change, what you have learned, and how it will mould your improvements.
Trust isn’t built through perfection, but through accountability. And follow-up matters more than many realize. People might not remember exactly what failed, but they will remember how the situation was handled, whether they felt uncertain, afraid or angry, or whether they felt secure, supported and calm.
Finally, improvements must turn into actual change. Every measure needs ownership, deadlines, and verification. Test them. Test them again. Plans updated but never tested are not preparedness. They’re assumptions. Because the next incident won’t test what you learned. It will test what was actually changed.
Good handling before an incident creates room to act when it happens. Good handling afterward shapes how the next one will unfold.
Because in a crisis, organisations aren’t judged only by what happened, but by how they lead when it does.