A New Blueprint for an Uncertain World

Most well-run companies—yours probably amongst them— spend considerable time and effort building and updating five-year plans. You know the exercise: deciding what your business will look like five years out and drawing a blueprint for how to get there. How is that five-year playbook you drew up in 2019 looking today? Chances are that your projections for facilities, IT, staffing, and the supply chain all turned to mincemeat. In fact, it’s hard to think of any part of business that’s running the way it was back then.

But now that you’ve taken and survived the initial shocks of the last two years, wallowing in busted plans doesn’t help you move forward. The question is no longer, “How can we adapt quickly until things get back to normal?” The better questions are “How can we move forward into a future where no one even knows what ‘work’ will look like?” and “How is it possible to plan for a future that’s so uncertain?” The reality is that you need a whole new blueprint—not one that attempts to dictate a fixed future but one that prepares your business to thrive in this era of uncertainty.