"Every December, business leaders engage in a familiar ritual: offering predictions for the year ahead. I've participated in the ritual myself. But after a year defined by AI volatility, climate shocks, supply chain disruptions, and regulatory curveballs, one thing feels clearer than any forecast: Nobody knows what's next. For decades, leaders could predict the future based on the past. Planning cycles were stable. Forecasts aged slower."
"It means we need a different kind of plan, built for a world where nothing is certain and adaptability is the real competitive advantage. Six years ago, at the start of the pandemic, the world underwent change on an almost unprecedented scale. Many assumptions that had held true for years were shattered: business models shifted overnight; strategy road maps were suddenly irrelevant; and the future we had been preparing for was already outdated."
"In the years since, this lesson has only been further underscored by Black Swan events and significant technological advancements. AI is redefining the way we live, study, and work, but we're racing to fully understand the implications of this change. Quantum computing, once considered distant, is entering near-term planning. Innovation is moving faster than the forecasts meant to describe it. The real danger is the false sense of confidence forecasts can create."
Business forecasting has lost reliability as rapid technological advances, climate shocks, supply-chain disruptions, and regulatory changes create persistent volatility. Traditional planning tied to historical trends and long cycles no longer suffices, because innovation and Black Swan events can render multi-year road maps obsolete. Organizations must adopt adaptive planning that prioritizes flexibility, rapid decision-making, and the capacity to pivot as conditions change. Overconfidence in forecasts risks anchoring strategy to timelines that may evaporate when reality shifts. Leaders benefit from making timely decisions under uncertainty rather than waiting for perfect clarity, and from designing systems that treat adaptability as a core competitive capability.
Read at Fortune
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