What you'll accomplish
You'll have a comprehensive crisis communications playbook covering your organization's most likely crisis scenarios, with decision trees, tiered response frameworks, pre-drafted holding statement templates, and stakeholder notification sequences. When a crisis hits, you'll spend your time implementing the plan instead of inventing it under pressure.
What you'll need
- Claude Pro or ChatGPT Plus ($20/mo)
- A basic understanding of your organization's most likely crisis types (IT outages, HR incidents, data breaches, financial news, safety incidents, leadership changes)
- List of key stakeholders who must be notified in a crisis (CEO, legal, HR, IT, board, etc.)
- Access to a Word document or shared drive to save the finished playbook
- Time needed: 60–90 minutes for initial playbook creation
- Cost: $20/month
Build a Crisis Communications Playbook with AI
Step 1: Define Your Organization's Crisis Scenarios
Before opening the AI, spend 15 minutes listing your most likely crisis types. Organize them into tiers:
Tier 1 (Internal-only, low urgency): System outages, policy change rollbacks, minor scheduling errors Tier 2 (Significant, requires prompt communication): Leadership departures, data privacy incidents, layoffs, facility closures Tier 3 (Major, requires immediate multi-channel response): Safety incidents, major data breach, public controversy, financial crisis, natural disasters
Write down 3–5 scenarios per tier. This is the raw material for your AI-generated playbook.
What you should see: A list of 9–15 crisis scenarios your organization is realistically likely to face.