By Professor Lawrence Bellamy, Academic Dean of the Faculty of Business, Law and Tourism.
"Many businesses trying to steer a clear path through current world affairs will feel ‘stressed’ in this environment. It's unprecedented in modern times to be hit by so many seismic events, including Brexit, Covid-19, and the Ukraine War. resulting in inflation, energy concerns, supply and market issues, labour shortages, currency fluctuations, and legislation changes to name but a few.
The current operating environment is highly turbulent and depending upon the sector, spans from challenging to downright cataclysmic. This results in winners and losers in the business world, with all the societal and personal issues which come with that.
Many sectors are experiencing a high rate of change or ‘dynamism’, with a compound impacting factor of significant uncertainty. This makes forecasting highly problematic and moves organisations away from a tightly planned approach, which favours a slower-moving environment with lower uncertainty towards a need for risk mitigation and responsiveness.
Risk mitigation ability comes from being able to read the significant environmental impact factors, noting the risks and planning contingency approaches in the event of those risks occurring. Responsiveness comes from the capacity to deploy those plans and associated changes to supply chain configuration, resourcing, and operational processes at speed.
Developing foresight capability is a significant barrier for many organisations, where experience may have limited benefit in informing the future (tomorrow doesn't look like today and even less like yesterday, probably). Therefore, risks are not identified and the resulting contingency plans don't cover possible occurrences.
Scenario planning approaches are a powerful thinking tool to develop insight and identify areas of uncertainty, where further learning is required to navigate the signs of change, in whichever direction.
Overall, however, there's a need to maintain clear sight of long-term direction, accepting that whilst the destination of the organisation, captured by the vision is set, the route to achieve this remains subject to necessary deviation, to overcome the obstacles encountered on the treacherous path."
Published: 21 March 2022