Why Reporting Lines Matter
This week two things crossed my path that made me want to set out some ideas, and get some feedback, on a subject that is very much linked to internal public affairs success…. your reporting lines. The first thing was reading some great pieces about calls for more Chief Political Officers (CPO) in the Board of companies (fully agree). The second was meeting a Public Affairs leader who reports into the Head of Finance. I will address CPO in due course because I think the more material conversation (as a step towards getting more CPOs) is the reporting line of PA leaders. To get the most out of a PA function it needs to report to the CEO and be part of the management team. Let me explain why I think this;
1. Strategic Alignment: I talk a lot about alignment as being key to internal success and if the PA leader reports to the CEO this can be done so much more easily. The PA function can fully support a business with this level of integration.
2. Enhanced Internal Influence and Credibility: It is also clear that a CEO reporting line will enhance the function’s internal influence and authority. This signal is important to support the PA agenda and ensure buy-in in the organisation.
3. Improved Agility and Coordination: Being part of the management team will allow the PA function to excel in a role that they naturally play so well – coordination.
4. Integration into Decision-Making: Often Public Affairs considerations come post-decision in organisations i.e. they take commercial decisions and then consider how PA will support them. Here PA gets further upstream and adds greater value by being included earlier. It also enables quicker responses to emerging issues, crises, or opportunities in the external environment.
5. Accountability and Results Focus: Perhaps not what every PA leader wants…but reporting to a CEO increases accountability for results and means the PA function needs to start quantifying and explaining performance. I believe this will drive improvements in performance.
These are just some of the reasons why I think more PA leaders should sit at the top table. By having PA functions reporting into marketing / finance and other areas of the business dilutes the potential impact that the function can have and signals its lower importance to the rest of the organisation. In today’s increasingly complex world is that really what organisations want?
