How to structure a corporate affairs team: the principles that hold across every sector

Ask ten Chief Communications Officers what the right structure for a corporate affairs team looks like, and you will get ten different answers. That’s not a problem – it’s the correct response to a genuinely context-dependent question. The right structure for a multinational consumer goods business is not the right structure for a FTSE 250 financial services firm, a fast-growth tech company, or a government department.

But there are principles that hold. Over the course of more than 25 in-depth interviews with Corporate Affairs Directors conducted for our Unlocking Potential research, and confirmed by our ongoing work with clients across sectors, a consistent set of structural truths emerged regardless of organisation size, sector, or complexity.

Start with the mandate, not the organogram

The most common structural mistake CCOs make is reaching for the organogram before they’re clear on the mandate. Structure should be the answer to a question: what does this function need to deliver, for whom, and against what business priorities? This shouldn’t be a template imported from a previous role or borrowed from a peer organisation as no two organisations are the same.

That mandate has to be grounded in a genuine conversation with the CEO. Until you have established it, and understand what the organisation needs from corporate affairs right now, you won’t know what team is required. As one CCO we interviewed put it: if you can, ask for the mandate on the way in. Everything else flows from that.

Our 2026 Global Communications Search Partnership report reinforces why this matters: a clear majority of functions now report directly to the CEO, yet priorities do not always align as closely as they might. Proximity to leadership does not automatically mean strategic partnership. Structure is one of the tools that closes that gap.

Let simplicity be your guiding principle

Once the mandate is clear, the structural design challenge is primarily one of simplicity. Your structure needs to make sense to the people inside the team, to the internal stakeholders who work with it, and to the organisation’s leadership. A complicated structure signals a confused mandate.

Clarity in structure and accountability is what allows a corporate affairs team to act as genuine strategic partners to the business. It also helps internal stakeholders understand what you do, and – just as importantly – what you don’t do. Scope creep is one of the most persistent threats to functional effectiveness, and a well-designed structure is your best defence against it.

“You’ll never achieve the perfect structure, you’ll need to evolve and change it over time and in response to the needs of the business.”

— Alice Hunt, Rolls-Royce

Align to the broader operating model and accept the imperfections that come with it

One of the most practical structural insights from our research was the value of aligning the corporate affairs structure to the organisation’s broader operating model. If the business is organised by geography, function, or business unit, there is usually a strong case for the corporate affairs team to mirror that logic -even if it means some loss of functional elegance.

This matters for two reasons. First, it makes corporate affairs more legible to the rest of the organisation: stakeholders can see how the function maps onto the business they know. Second, and more substantively, it makes it easier to integrate corporate affairs into strategic decision-making rather than having it operate as a parallel structure that engages with the business from the outside.

Living with those imperfections is part of the job. A good HR partner and a genuinely collaborative approach to the design process are both essential.

Move deliberately, but don’t avoid the inevitable

How fast should structural change happen? Our research produced a clear, if initially counterintuitive, answer: listen first, then move with intent.

The leaders who got this right took time to understand their stakeholders’ expectations before acting and then moved quickly and decisively. Those who struggled tended to fall into one of two traps: acting on instinct before gathering enough context, or gathering so much context that the changes arrived too late to have the intended impact.

“Even if you think you know the big changes you need to make: Listen, listen, listen to your stakeholders first. Move a bit slower now to move fast later.”

— Caitlin Hayden, BAE Systems

The one clear exception to the ‘move slowly, act carefully’ principle: when someone in the team is clearly not up to, or up for, the challenge ahead. No one we spoke to regretted moving quickly on that. Many wished they had been more decisive sooner. Attitude is everything and a well-designed structure will still fail if it is populated with the wrong people.

Structure is not a one-time exercise

The most important thing to understand about corporate affairs structure is that it is not a project with an end point. The needs of the business evolve, people move on, and the external environment shifts in ways that demand different things from the function. The right structure today may not be the right structure in eighteen months.

The best CCOs we work with look at their structure regularly and treat it as a living reflection of the function’s purpose rather than an organisational asset to be protected. That mindset of continuous, thoughtful evolution rather than periodic, disruptive overhaul is the one most likely to produce a team capable of sustained high performance.

Taylor Birchwood’s Unlocking Potential research explored the structural and talent decisions behind high-performing corporate affairs functions. If you’re working through a restructure or want to benchmark your current model, we’d welcome the conversation.

Published: November 2025