Strategic Communications in a Fractured World: Key Takeaways from Leading with Insight 

This morning I chaired a panel at The Ivy Club on strategic communications in a fractured world, with Katie Simpson (Managing Partner, Hanson Search), Mona Patel (Director of Corporate Affairs, Premium Credit), Madeleine Hallward (Non-Executive Director, House of Lords Management Board and Office of Rail and Road) and Andrew McConnell (Deputy Director, Communications and Engagement, Civil Aviation Authority). The conversation ranged from Malaysia Airlines to Metro Bank, from a Welsh plant closure to quantum computing, but a handful of themes ran through everything. 

External instability has made comms more strategically important, not less

EY research suggests that around 60% of the swing in FTSE 100 share prices now has nothing to do with what a company itself has done. It is geopolitics, trade policy, energy prices, political instability. A business can do everything right internally and still get knocked sideways by events in Tehran, Westminster or Washington. Reputation is different, that’s usually self-inflicted. The moment that really tests a business is when an external shock lands on top of an internal misstep, and that is exactly the moment communications needs to already be in the room for. 

No one else in the business understands stakeholders the way comms does 

Comms is the function that understands every other function, and every internal and external audience, better than any single one of them does. That’s the case for a genuine seat at the table, not a media briefing after the decision has already been made. But Katie was clear that this only holds if the profession does its part: it needs to properly understand the business itself, and the P&L, not just the media landscape. Firms are still hiring for a media relations skill set when what they actually need is someone who can sit across the table from a litigator, a restructuring partner and a CEO, and hold their own on the commercial substance of the decision. 

When the stakes are highest, fewer voices in the room is a mistake

Madeleine’s point was that the instinct under pressure is to simplify decision making by narrowing the room. That produces a faster decision, not a better one. Comms exists to bring in the perspectives that get missed when a room is deliberately kept small, and to properly listen to all of the key stakeholders before a decision is set. The best description of how that should work in practice was the “squiggly line”: talking to stakeholders, coming back, talking again, rather than a straight line from decision to announcement. It takes longer. It produces a strategy that can withstand what gets thrown at it from outside. 

Reputation matters, and it’s hard to get back once it’s gone

Mona’s examples, from Metro Bank’s 2019 accounting scandal to British Home Stores’ slow collapse, made the point clearly. A damaged reputation doesn’t go away. It becomes the permanent second half of every story told about you afterwards, even good news stories, for years. Her sharpest illustration of comms value was a “what you didn’t see” slide: the headline that would have run had corporate affairs not intervened, set against a blank page showing what actually happened instead. Often, if comms has done its job well, the result is nothing happening at all. That’s a difficult thing to put in a report, which is exactly why it tends to be undervalued. 

The profession has over indexed on delivery and coverage, and that undervalues what we actually do

We’ve focused so heavily on demonstrating ROI, on column inches and campaign metrics, because they’re demonstrable, that we’ve lost sight of where the real value sits. That technician-level delivery work is precisely what AI can now do. The strategic work, the horizon scanning, the difficult early questions, resolving conflict between internal and external perspectives, is the side that can’t be automated, and the side that actually gets comms into the boardroom. A profession that keeps measuring itself by coverage will keep undervaluing the work that matters most, at exactly the point AI makes that delivery work commoditised. 

Comms needs to be part of the decision, not brought in to explain it afterwards

This is really the same structural point as Madeleine’s, seen from a different angle. Andrew’s example was regulating emerging technology at the CAA, quantum computing, drone taxis, satellite constellations, but the principle is broader than any one sector. His advice was to get comms round the table from day one, alongside the engineers and scientists shaping the decision, rather than waiting until something is finished and ready to be announced. The job isn’t just translation after the fact. It’s understanding the substance early enough to help shape the decision itself, and to work out how it will land with every stakeholder before it’s made, not once it’s already public. 

None of this works unless comms sits at, or reports into, the top table

Every panellist arrived at the same structural point from a different direction. Comms has to report into the CEO, or sit genuinely at the top table, for any of the above to happen in practice. And if you want to hire the best people, this is non negotiable: senior candidates increasingly ask about reporting lines before they’ll even look at a brief. Organisations that get the structure wrong aren’t just weakening their own comms function, they’re locking themselves out of the best talent in the market. 

Thank you to Katie, Mona, Madeleine and Andrew for such a rich discussion, and to everyone who joined us at The Ivy Club.