Crisis management is the most important and the hardest part of the crisis

When crisis hits, the crisis team (CMT) is in a difficult spot. The hardest part is not usually how to communicate about the situation. Hardest part is usually how to fix the issue which caused the crisis, who makes the decisions, how to continue after the crisis, how to pick the line of communication from different options and who is going to be the talking head.
 
Crisis communication is a part of crisis management, but certainly not the only part and usually not even the hardest part. Crisis management is hard. Supporting the crisis manager is hard. Cooperation among the crisis team is hard. Defining the goal and separating the relevant from the irrelevant is hard.

This is why one should train for crises. And train also management with the communication. Crisis management is not just abstract talk about resilience. It is organizing, delegation, seeing the situational picture and finding the relevant information.

Effective crisis management is based on simple rules which are easy to practice. The manager doesn’t succeed alone. An effective CMT is needed. The manager has to know how to lead the CMT and the CMT needs to know how they can help the manager and to get out of the crisis with minimal damage.