Leadership Lessons with Alfie Brierley, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at MCIA UK

Peter Ferguson, Managing Consultant at Hanson Search, spoke with Alfie Brierley, Director of Public Affairs and Policy at MCIA UK about to discuss why public affairs is about far more than access, how boards should think about political risk and where the industry is heading over the next five years.

How did you build your career in public affairs and political strategy?

I was always interested in politics, but what really interested me was the gap between how people think politics works and how it actually works. So many people assume politics is driven purely by ideology or persuasion, and that lobbying is simply about convincing someone in a room. In practice, influence is far more structural. It’s about incentives, leverage, risk and timing. It’s about understanding pressure points in the system. Early on, I was struck by how often capable businesses fundamentally misunderstand the political environment or treat it as secondary until it’s too late. It’s about understanding where decisions are made and what constraints shape them.

Politics is a core operating system of the economy. It shapes markets, regulation, capital flows and competitive advantage. If leadership teams aren’t factoring that into decision-making, they’re carrying unpriced risk. If you don’t understand that context and the extent to which it shapes decisions and markets, you’re not running a serious organisation.

Public affairs is one of the few roles that forces you to balance commercial pressures, reputational risk, regulatory change and geopolitical realities all at once. It’s about understanding how those forces interact and how the pieces move together. That structural perspective is what has kept me in the field.

What qualities define effective leadership in public affairs and political advisory roles?

Leadership in public affairs requires less polish and more judgement. Presentation helps but is overrewarded in agency settings. Strategic honesty and a willingness to tell clients how it really is are often less comfortable and therefore less valued. A strong leader needs the confidence to tell a client, CEO or board when an idea is politically unworkable, or when they are misreading the environment, before serious time and money are committed.

Most failures in public affairs aren’t about access. They stem from a failure to challenge. There can be a commercial incentive to avoid difficult conversations, particularly in advisory environments. But access without strategy is nothing more than theatre.

Effective leaders also recognise that regulation, trade, ESG, industrial strategy, AI and geopolitics are interconnected. They don’t move in silos. Political decisions increasingly shape entire sectors, not isolated issues. Treating public affairs as reactive issue management feels outdated. It’s increasingly a function tied directly to enterprise risk and long-term value creation.

Finally, there is the question of ambiguity. Politics moves quickly and rarely provides perfect information. It remains a people business, but it is no longer defined simply by access or networks. What matters is understanding systems, incentives and constraints, and having the judgement to act within them.

What are the biggest challenges facing public affairs leaders today?

Externally, politics can feel noisy and chaotic. But in my experience, it is often more rational than people assume. Politicians tend to act in their own interests and once you understand those incentives, the environment becomes more predictable. The bigger challenge is usually internal.

Many organisations still treat public affairs as crisis insurance. It gets attention when something goes wrong. The real value, though, sits in the long term. Political risk should be built into business planning from the outset, not added on later. A big part of the job is persuading colleagues to take that risk seriously before it starts to affect performance.

Another core challenge is translating political risk into commercial language. That means being clear about the cost of doing nothing and being honest about timeframes. Regulation doesn’t move in quarterly cycles. Shifting a framework or repositioning a sector can take years.

There is also the question of patience. Boards are understandably focused on short-term metrics. Public affairs operates on a completely different horizon. Leaders must make the case for staying the course, otherwise organisations end up reactive and constantly exposed to external shocks.

Why is board-level public affairs representation important?

Board-level public affairs representation is incredibly important. Lots of boards are made up of commercially minded leaders, often with sales or operational backgrounds. That is a strength. They bring valuable commercial instincts and discipline. But political nuance does not always land unless it is translated clearly into commercial, regulatory and reputational impact.

It is not about lobbying the board harder. It is about reframing the discussion in terms that resonate. Boards are naturally inclined towards short-term metrics. They focus on this quarter’s performance, next month’s sales, this week’s headlines. Regulation, legislation and perception shift over years, not quarters. If those longer-term political questions are not being asked at board level, companies can become strategically underweight on political risk without realising it.

There is also a tendency to become reactive. If organisations focus only on immediate pressure or headline risk, they revert to type. They respond to events rather than shaping the environment around them. That leaves them exposed.

Board-level representation matters because it forces longer-term questions into the room. How will the policy environment shift over the next five years? Are we positioned as part of the problem or part of the solution? How does our political positioning affect growth and licence to operate? If those conversations are not happening at the top, the company is carrying more risk than it thinks.

How is the public affairs industry evolving over the next five years?

Over the next five years, I think the public affairs market will continue to split in two. There will always be agencies that focus on traditional services such as access and monitoring. Clients will continue to value access. That will not disappear. Many briefs are still relatively straightforward, and there will always be demand for what might be described as Public Affairs 101.

However, public affairs has never fundamentally been about access. Securing meetings does not require mythical contacts if you understand the machinery of government and have something credible to say. Access is often the easy part. What matters is what happens after the meeting. Timing, judgement and understanding when a genuine policy window is open are far more important than simply being in the room.

The more differentiated end of the market will increasingly focus on political intelligence, systems thinking and long-term positioning. It will be less about persuasion in isolation and more about incentives, leverage and timing. Knowing when government needs industry more than industry needs government, for example, is a strategic judgement call, not a contact list.

Monitoring and commoditised services will continue to have a place. But separation in the market will come from those who help clients think beyond short-term cycles and integrate political risk into long-term strategy. The premium end of the industry will be defined less by access and more by judgement.

It goes without saying that technology and AI will accelerate this change. Data, insight and predictive capability will become more sophisticated, but even then, the real differentiation will remain human judgement.

What advice would you give to someone starting a career in public affairs?

The obvious advice, and it is still the right advice in the short term, is to speak to as many people as possible and seek out internships or placements as early as possible. Whether that’s in an agency, an in-house team or with an MP, exposure matters early on. It helps you understand how different parts of the system operate and builds confidence quickly.

In the medium to longer term, I would prioritise understanding over proximity. Knowing someone is far less important than understanding how the system works. If I were starting again, I would focus more on depth of knowledge than on simply being close to power.

I would also strongly encourage gaining industry experience at some point. Agencies are excellent for pace and breadth. You see multiple sectors and issues at once. But as you move into mid-level roles, you can hit a ceiling if you have never actually run anything or carried commercial accountability. Advising a business is very different from being responsible for one. Understanding how a company makes money, what keeps leadership awake at night and how operations function makes you far more credible as an adviser. It grounds your advice in reality rather than theory.

Finally, writing is critical. In every organisation I have worked in, the most consistent criticism of junior professionals has been their writing. If you can write clearly and persuasively, it is noticed immediately. Writing shapes arguments. It shapes how decisions are framed. It is one of the most powerful tools you have in public affairs, and it is worth investing serious time in developing it.

Whether you’re hiring top Public Affairs talent or considering your next career move, our team would be delighted to support you.

Peter Ferguson is Managing Consultant in the Public Affairs Practice. Peter advises and supports some of the world’s most renowned communications consultancies, boutique public affairs agencies and global in-house clients.

Hanson Search is a globally recognised, award-winning talent advisory and headhunting consultancy. Our expertise lies in building successful ventures worldwide through our recruitment, interim and executive search in communications, sustainability, public affairs and policy, digital marketing and sales.