Hearts & Minds: When the world refuses to pause

Donald Trump is in town. With his second state visit to the UK will come a wave of tech investments, carefully trailed in advance. Some of the announcements have been held back, saved for the cameras. All of it has been choreographed, planned and replanned, over weeks, months of meticulous preparation. And yet. The past few days have delivered plot-lines no one put on the comms grid: Peter Mandelson’s firing and the damage to Starmer’s authority; Charlie Kirk’s killing and the cultural fault-lines it exposed. And still to come: whatever breaks during the trip itself.

It was ever thus. Such occasions and others, like the Nato, G7 and G20 summits, have a tendency to be ambushed by events, domestic and global, that refuse to follow the script. Politics knows how to cope - it operates on permanent pivot mode, able to rewire the messaging on the fly. Business isn’t so well drilled. Corporate set pieces - a results call, a product launch, a new initiative - are equally vulnerable to disruption. But companies still expect the world to pause politely while they take centre stage. It doesn’t - the outside keeps intruding.

Company comms must learn to adapt, to move quickly, to reschedule if necessary. It has to be prepared to go off piste, to deal with the question from left field that may well relate to whatever is happening in the wider picture. The CEO and their comms teams should try putting themselves in the shoes of the journalist, of the news organisation. Suddenly, theirs is not the most vital, arresting story any more. The reporters are under severe pressure to land a quote, to obtain a reaction. Given the opportunity, they are bound to ask.

Politicians are smart at this. They can manage the unprompted. Ad-libbing is second nature to them. It does not matter that much of the time what they are saying may be nonsense. They are also excellent at not actually answering - it is only when the tape is played back that the journalist realises they never addressed what was being raised. Businesses must be prepared to follow suit.

They should, too, adopt a healthy dose of realism. Many is the company boss who rails about their development not leading the schedules or being bumped down the page. They must accept they’re not as interesting as they believed they were, and for some that is easier said than done.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.