Economic Forecast – “Heavy Weather Ahead” Robert McGarvey

Success today is less and less about ‘having the right strategy’, and more about being a strategic organization.

The problem is that to be strategic today is quite a different exercise that it was even a few years ago. For instance in the past we could always count on a  few key things, such as a stable financial system or relatively stable currencies – these foundation stones made investment decision making and international trade possible and predictable.

Today both of these foundations have been rocked by the underlying changes in the economy. And, they are not alone there a host of foundational assumptions that no longer apply, or simply can not be taken for granted.

So what does this mean for management, how will this affect decision making, or the kind of organization we need to build to succeed today, or the new formula for determining a good investment opportunity?

This blog is all about examining our world more broadly and gaining a greater awareness of potential disruptive changes. Getting on top of all this means un-bounding our thinking, revisiting our organizational values and our planning apparatus, and starting to look at political, social and economic forces – issue areas that have traditionally been ‘out of sight’.

These are a few of the deep seated trends and forces that we’ll need to know a whole lot better in future that we have in the past. If we ignore them they won’t go away, we’ll simply have to deal with them reactively after they’ve worked their way down to the real world, changing our industries creating danger and opportunity at the ground level.

The Age of Volatility Blog is a forum for coming to grips with all this. We intend to take a deep dive into these issues and open a dialogue that will focus on applications at the company level. Hopefully in the process we’ll all gain greater insight into how these disruptive forces can be managed – converted from dangers into opportunities for your organization.

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