Developing strategy in a disrupted environment is complex and difficult. You need to have the best strategy and risk teams in place.

Tracking performance against strategic KPIs is vital to future proof the organisation and position for ongoing development. But the future is not going to be the same as today, just a today is turning out to be very different from yesterday. Right now we’ re in the greatest period of uncertainty that the world has faced in the last 75 years.

Some will read the landscape well and position their organisation to benefit. Others will miss the mark and fall behind. Some will go the way of the dinasour.

It pays to make the best use of your most creative and intuitive people in charting the future. Rigid planning models have had their use-by date.

“Formulated by the German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg in 1927, the uncertainty principle states that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle's position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa.” https://scienceexchange.caltech.edu/topics/quantum-science-explained/uncertainty-principle

In other words, it can be difficult to unravel all aspects of a particular disrupter. Just consider the debate going on about the imposition of tariffs on various aspects of world trade. Economists are struggling to predict the outcome. And the game keeps changing.

Maybe the best you can do is build a model of those factors likely to disrupt your business or community organisation. Then feed this into your business continuity planning.

Financial performance is the cornerstone of an organisation’s viability. Tracking gross revenue, EBIT, ROE and TSR are baseline for any commercial enterprise.

Past financial performance is not always a predictor of future performance. A number of disruptions can quickly come into play such as:

1. A shortage of working capital

2. A shift in demand

3. Imposition of tariffs

4. Changes in regulatory environment

5. Volatility in share markets

Charting the financial future goes beyond budgeting and financial planning. Disrupters make this task increasingly difficult. Current developments in world markets elevates financial risks cluster into the “High” category.

Has your organisation got a business continuity plan in place? If so what does it look like? Most have an IT disaster recovery plan. But the disruption we are facing today goes beyond IT. It touches every aspect of your organisation. Nothing is certain.

Let’s suppose the worst happens. Your government funding is dramatically reduced, subsidies for you core activities evaporate, a new AI based innovation make your products or services redundant.

A business continuity plan forms part of your strategic planning process. It involves assessing the risks, and the impact if a major risk comes to pass. How will you continue to function and deliver your goods and services.

You need to allocate the right resources to get you business continuity plan in place and review it often in this disrupted environment.

Everything up until now in this discussion of Applied Intelligence relies on your people. Assessing the environment, charting direction, assessing the financial landscape, planning for contingencies. It’s complicated. AI can assist in various aspects. It can quickly scan on-line resources and feed information to you. But to bring it all together so that you can flourish in a disrupted environment takes that spark of creativity.

You need solid, reliable and intellectually capable people to deliver your baseline products and services. Everything from procurement to maintaining your customer database, and a thousand other things that it take to run an organisation.

But you also need that infusion of genius to come up with new and innovative ideas in these troubled times. Consider developing a strategic navigation skills matrix to make the best use of your available resources and identify gaps.

All companies, government entities and community organisations need to take the lead when it comes to managing their environmental performance. Scope 1-3 emissions and a forward positioning strategy is imperative. So lets unpack ESG a little bit.

From 1 January 2025 larger listed companies and financial institutions ($500 m plus revenue) are required to report to ASIC on a range of ESG measures. These include providing a statement of climate related risks and opportunities, the entities financial metrics and results for Scope 1-3 emissions, information about the entities approach to strategy, governance and risk around these metrics.

In subsequent years this mandatory reporting will flow on to smaller entities. The need to undertake this reporting sharpens the focus on the need to adhere to ESG principles. It needs to reflect a genuine commitment to Environmental and Social performance and informed Governance.

The term “Network Centrality” can be used to describe an organisation’s positioning with regard to its key stakeholders. Let’s consider who some of them are:

Owners/Shareholders: they expect a reasonable return for their investment.

Customers/Clients: may be your primary source of revenue and need to be treated accordingly.

Employees: do the work required for you to deliver.

Suppliers: provide the inputs and support services for you to function.

Communities: you exist within a context, be it local, national or international.

Regulators: set the boundaries within which you can operate.

The list could go on. But you get the picture. Maybe the new catch phrase should be “Stakeholder Primacy”.

All organisations have compliance obligations. In some industries, such as electricity distributors, pricing is regulated, and the company must make regular pricing submissions to the Australian Energy Regulator.

As mentioned under ESG over the next three years all orgaisations with a turnover of $50m or more will progressively be required to report to ASIC on environmental performance.

Major financial institutions are required to meet a raft of APRA reporting requirements including CPS 511 on executive remuneration.

Whatever the compliance regime your organisation operates under the impost is significant and needs to be factored into your strategic planning.

The corporate secretary or governance manager has a handle on this and needs to be included in your critical strategic navigation skills matrix.