The aim of this paper was to distinguish what crisis planning in modern organizations truly is, and why it is important to know what actually planning is, what its functions are, and how management must approach problems and crisis situations in which an organization might find itself or already are. In order to understand what crisis planning is, we need to get to the heart of the problem, but management must also recognize the causes, symptoms and consequences of a crisis in order to be able to develop an adequate crisis plan and to select a strategy and model for early detection or to exit the crisis. Modern organizations need to have a strong focus on crisis communication in addition to crisis planning because communication is something without which organizations today cannot function if they want their business to survive. Management must have people in charge of communication because in the event of a crisis it is necessary to carefully choose how and in a which way to communicate. Based on the analysis of the Croatian Railroad crisis situation, we could see that crisis situations can happen in a second, suddenly, and that crisis planning and crisis communication must be planned literally in a second, because the business of the entire organization depends on it. That is why it is important that every modern organization does not skimp on the education of professional management in order to be able to respond adequately to every crisis situation and challenge.