Are you missing out on the secret weapon every successful corporation is using? Meet the Chief Political Officer!

Once upon a time the world was flat, as Thomas Friedman said, and CEOs didn’t need to check their phones at dinner. Now, it’s a crisis on its own: all bets are off when it comes to supply chains and trade routes, auditors plead “material uncertainty” on accounts, and boards of directors jot down election dates in rich countries. “Government relations” is no longer a corporate backwater.

The war in Ukraine, Brexit, the French-fueled protests, the Trump presidency followed by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act—they were all products of politics, of voters and leaders behaving in ways that didn’t fit the paradigm of globalization. Executives who weathered the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic were already feeling daunted by the challenges of the energy transition, diversity and artificial intelligence. Now they also have to deal with politics. It is no longer just governments that need a foreign policy: every large company too.

If you’re going to move your supply chain out of China, where do you go? India, Vietnam, Morocco? What risks are insurable? What businesses can survive political upheaval? This is a war game of the kind that was played by generals. Economic and political uncertainty meant that more FTSE-listed companies issued profit warnings in the third quarter of last year than in any comparable period since the global financial crisis.

In speaking to executives at business conferences in the US and UK, it strikes me that no single leader can tackle all challenges. Instead, big companies need something like a Chief Political Officer. Not some politician has been, peddling a contact list that will expire when their party loses office. Instead this would be a technocrat who understands that government is a constant triangulation between parliament, party and press; that politicians rarely precede public opinion on any issue; that unlike in business there is no simple bottom line. And it should be someone who can forge a new era of cooperation between two parties who often openly despise each other.

In recent years, industry and Western governments have not had to worry much about each other. Aside from the financial crisis, they have largely operated in silos, with little understanding of each other. But governments are becoming more interventionist. Not only does Biden’s energy and chip legislation force other countries to respond; technological advances will make regulation a hallmark of this decade. When even the creator of ChatGPT calls for guardrails for AI, it’s a watershed.

Meanwhile, climate change is influencing the way nations think about agriculture, construction and travel. Genetic testing is still largely unregulated; new gene-editing techniques have the potential to permanently alter future generations. These issues are debated by eminent scientists, but politicians must enter the fray to contend with commercial experts and innovators as well. Are governments capable of meeting the challenges? They have been notoriously clumsy and slow to adjust to fast-moving technologies.

Raising their game will mean working in concert with commerce rather than getting caught up in lobbyists. The “revolving door” often gets a bad rap: when former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder became president of Nord Stream 2, it was probably the worst kind of cronyism. But it didn’t hurt Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s silent, imposing prime minister, to have spent a decade in finance. Experiencing what the other side is like can foster more respect and less naivety that leads to regulatory capture.

Business leaders often find politics totally baffling, as if it’s a totally new language. In the UK, it comes as no surprise that so many executives are horrified by politics and would rather stay out of it. Five prime ministers in seven years have made wild political leaps, despite sporting the same party label. David Cameron accidentally created Brexit, Boris Johnson had no plans to do it and Liz Truss gave the nation the “idiot prize” in the form of higher mortgages. Even earlier, businessmen who entered the government often foundered.

For its part, the government must stop treating business relationships as mere theater and find ways to actually listen. At different stages of my career, I’ve sat on different sides of the table in meetings between CEOs and government ministers. I’ve seen CEOs fail to communicate clearly, not understanding what is and isn’t in the gift of government, and I’ve seen ministers fail to realize that no one will say anything useful if their competitor is in the room.

Businesses will also be affected by the trade-offs governments make between the economy and national security. It’s possible that this could change which institutions will actually be allowed to fail. Banks, insurance companies, energy companies, railways, universities: theoretically autonomous in many countries, they can end up being protected in practice. Was the Fed’s move to bail out uninsured depositors at Silicon Valley Bank a sign of things to come?

A Chief Political Officer would need tolerance for ambiguity. The level of uncertainty is exhausting and may be why the average age of new CEOs is dropping for the first time. Former US Lieutenant General and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster once described the post-Cold War period as a “vacation from history.” But now, geopolitics is back with a vengeance. Leaders must field their own generals, the ones who can stand the filth of politics.

camilla.cavendish@ft.com