The Essential Crisis Communications Plan
Simplifies Creation of Customized Crisis Management Plan
Crisis and Issues Management Veteran Tim O’Brien Condenses Decades
of Crisis Management Experience into a Real-time, Step-by-Step Handbook
Pittsburgh, PA, August 2, 2023 – Crisis communications and issues management veteran Tim O’Brien’s new book, The Essential Crisis Communications Plan: A Crisis Management Process that Fits Your Culture, is unique in the world of communications-centric books in that it is an actual crisis management plan readers can quickly adapt to their own operating cultures.
“While the book itself is new, it’s actually decades in the making,” said O’Brien. “I’ve known I was going to write this book for several years, but I wanted to wait until a point at which I could be more reflective and candid. I saw this as a chance for me to condense in as simple a format as possible the core lessons and methods of crisis management as I understand them after hundreds of crises and decades in handling them.”
The Essential Crisis Communications Plan features the complete content for a crisis communications plan readers can easily customize to their own organizations, taking into account all the unique ways they gather and process information, set priorities and make decisions.
“This approach is real-world tested and proven,” said O’Brien. “I’ve used it many times and several clients have used it. The plan is modeled on how veteran crisis communicators jump into the most intense situations and mitigate crises in real time. It provides the reader with everything needed to integrate crisis communications preparedness into their cultures long before a disruption occurs.”
The crisis communications plan is adaptable to situations from a brand crisis or a boycott, from a labor dispute to a train derailment. In addition to the plan, the book includes bonus chapters, worksheets, models, and examples of what readers need to establish their own systems to prevent small crises from getting bigger, and to effectively manage the biggest crises they could face.
O’Brien has condensed what he’s honed over decades in crisis management and presents it in a compact handbook that will help readers:
- Put everything into place so that when a crisis hits, their organizations will be ready in 60 minutes or less;
- Efficiently gather and analyze all the information needed to develop powerful key messages;
- Prep senior management team for the worst of the worst;
- Adapt the fundamental crisis communications principles in the book to any and every communications platform, technology, tactic and media channel; and
- Leverage non-crisis periods to get ahead of the next crisis.
About the Author
Tim O’Brien, founder of O’Brien Communications (OBrienCommunications.com), has provided crisis communications and issues management support to clients from Fortune 100 firms and national nonprofits, to emerging start-ups. Tim has handled hundreds of crises, large and small over decades, working with some of the most iconic brands in the world along the way.
Before founding his firm in 2001, O’Brien oversaw Corporate Communications and Investor Relations for a publicly traded tech company involved in the rollout of broadband technology. Before that, he spent 10 years at global public relations firm Ketchum.
He has been accredited by the Public Relations Society of America, and over the years he has served on its national Governance Committee and its Board of Ethics and Professional Standards.
He has been honored with numerous awards. He has lectured to professional groups and on college campuses. He contributed to the PR News Crisis Management Guidebook, the PR News Employee Communications Guidebook, and he was featured in Harvard Business School Press’s The Essentials of Corporate Communications and Public Relations. He is a graduate of Duquesne University.
The Essential Crisis Communications Plan is available for order here.
To schedule an interview with Tim O’Brien, please contact him at 412.854.8845 or timobrien@timobrienpr.com.