Hanson Search and The Work Crowd recently brought together senior communications, corporate affairs and policy leaders at The Ivy Club for a panel on strategic communications in a fractured world.
Geopolitical instability, regulatory change, stakeholder activism and heightened public scrutiny are reshaping how organisations protect reputation and make decisions at the highest level. Communications is no longer simply responsible for the message. It has earned its place at the top table.
The conversation ranged from Malaysia Airlines to Metro Bank, and from a Welsh plant closure to quantum computing regulation. A handful of themes ran through all of it.
What the panel concluded
- External instability has made communications more strategically important, not less. EY research suggests around 60% of the swing in FTSE 100 share prices has nothing to do with what a company itself has done.
- Communications understands every function and every audience better than any single one of them does. That is the case for a genuine seat at the table.
- Under pressure, the instinct is to narrow the room. That produces a faster decision, not a better one.
- Reputation is difficult to recover once lost. It becomes the permanent second half of every story told about you afterwards.
- The profession has over indexed on coverage and delivery, which is precisely the work AI can now do. The strategic work cannot be automated.
- Communications needs to be part of the decision from day one, not brought in to explain it afterwards.
- None of it works unless communications reports into the CEO or sits genuinely at the top table. Senior candidates now ask about reporting lines before they will look at a brief.
Read the full write-up of the discussion here.
Our Panel
- Chaired by Madeleine Weightman, Co-Founder and COO, The Work Crowd
Katie Simpson, Managing Partner, Hanson Search
Mona Patel, Director of Corporate Affairs, Premium Credit Ltd
Andrew McConnell, Deputy Director for Communications, Civil Aviation Authority
Madeleine Hallward, Non-Executive Director, House of Lords Management Board and Office of Rail and Road
Event Details
Date: Tuesday 14th July
Time: 8.30am arrivals and networking
Panel: 9.00am to 10.00am
Location: The Ivy Club, London
Strengthen Your Strategic Communications Function
Whether you are a communications professional looking to move into this kind of advisory work, or a firm building out these capabilities and needing to find the rare talent that can operate at this intersection, we would love to talk. Hanson Search has spent years placing senior communications professionals into exactly these roles, and we understand what that looks like at this level. Should you wish to discuss future leadership needs, we would welcome the opportunity to speak. Please contact our team via the form below.