So now what?

Mark Carney’s Davos speech showed the world is changing. Is your Corporate Affairs function ready for it?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos address generated enormous reaction. Rather than rushing to add my voice, I took time to consider what it means practically for how we do corporate affairs.

My take is decidedly not hot: it was a clear, rational response to Canada’s new reality. I may have missed a critical window of attention in the fast-moving world of social media, but I’m OK with that.

Whatever the politics underlying it, Carney offered a clear, rational and strategic response to the situation Canada finds itself in. Many argue the country shouldn’t be in the position it is. Almost certainly, it will be difficult to manage. But that misses the point: as a middle power, Canada (like most of us) is suddenly confronted with a new reality. Its best bet is to do… something… and diversification is a rational, smart play.

The vision Carney sketched out implies a critical change we need to make in the way we run our own organisations. Gone are the days when we can rely on a predictable international system. In this new reality we all need to hedge.

As great as your business might be in one market or another, your reality is changeable. If you’re not looking around corners and planning across the business to withstand different versions of the future – from supply chain to stakeholder management – you’re exposing your enterprise to significant risk. Turns out very few of us are masters of our own universe.

So now what?

It depends on the situation you find yourself in. (Doesn’t it always?) And agility is key: efficiency remains important, but we also need to plan better, respond faster and adapt to changes with purpose and precision. For corporate affairs practitioners, agility is a function of five factors:

• Structure: The right expertise, governance and incentive systems to manage complexity—not just defend yesterday’s business model.

• Story: Ensuring a compelling case for your existence: one that’s genuine and compelling, but also future-proof and flexible.

• Relationships: Strong, personal relationships have always been important. In the future, they’ll matter even more.

• Intelligence: Being able to identify and plan for different outcomes will be essential. Distinguishing good information from bad will be tricky.

• Process: You’ll need to be fast and adaptable if you want to be relevant. Focusing on intelligent outcomes, rather than legacy process, will keep you nimble.

I will discuss each of these components in more depth in the future.

Gone are the days when the role of corporate affairs was simply to defend and sustain the business. Now is the time to look into the future. To drive a proactive agenda. To see around corners. To build redundancy into the system. To ensure your leadership responds quickly, in a relevant way, across multiple channels to a diverse group of important stakeholders. We need to figure out what AI and other new tech can do for us, and what their limits are. And we need to be able to lead our organisations into a new world; hedging our bets without losing clarity of purpose.

The next few years will be a wild ride. If you’re hoping for a return to 2015, probably best to close your eyes now. But if you’re up for creating a strategic response, this is an exciting moment — daunting yes, but one I’d love to help you think through.