Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

The hyperactive first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have been the most consequential of any president this century, and perhaps since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Before the inauguration Americans wondered what sort of government they were getting. That debate is now over. Mr Trump is leading a revolutionary project that aspires to remake the economy, the bureaucracy, culture and foreign policy, even the idea of America itself. The question for the next 1,361 days is: will he succeed?

Mr Trump’s presidency has been popular with his voters. His approval among Republicans is at 90%. He has faced little resistance as he has charged ahead on all fronts, attacking the civil service, law firms, universities, the media and any institution he associates with the Democratic-leaning elite.

As with any revolution, MAGA has a method and a theory. The method is to bend or break the law in a blitz of executive orders and, when the courts catch up, to dare them to defy the president. The theory is one of unconstrained executive power—the idea that, as Richard Nixon suggested, if the president does something then it’s legal. This has already undermined things that actually make America great: a view of the national interest large enough to take in paying for AIDS medication in Africa; a sense that independent institutions have their own value; a belief that your political opponents can be patriots; and faith in the dollar.

If this revolution is unchecked it could lead towards authoritarianism. Some MAGA intellectuals admire Hungary, where Viktor Orban exercises control over the courts, the universities and the media. And America does indeed leave some room for a would-be authoritarian. Congress has created a lot of exceptions to normal rules which can be activated by the president declaring an emergency, and Mr Trump is making full use of them—witness his delight at the president of El Salvador’s ability to lock people up without trial. Although MAGA cannot control the media, it can intimidate their corporate owners—and, besides, fragmentation has diluted the press’s power to check the president. Congress is supine because Republicans owe him their jobs, and they know it. One worry is that the courts will stand their ground, only for the administration to defy their rulings. Another is that, fearing this, the Supreme Court may try to preserve its authority by pre-emptively caving in.

Yet there is another, more likely, scenario in which the extremism of the first 100 days stirs up powerful forces of resistance. One such force is investors in the bond market and the stockmarket. Though they were broadly enthusiastic about Mr Trump’s election, they have been his most effective opponents—not out of political conviction, but because they deal in reality. They are rightly alarmed about the economy being poisoned by tariffs. Uncontrolled budget deficits and incompetent policy could lead to a crash of the dollar.

Faced with distress in the markets, Mr Trump has backed down twice in the past month, first over imposing “reciprocal” tariffs, and this week over firing Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve. And as Elon Musk promises to spend less time bulldozing the bureaucracy in order to tend to his ailing electric-car business instead, Mr Trump has hinted that he wants to find a way out of the unsustainable and ill-thought-through trade war he has launched against China.

Another source of resistance could be voters, including Republicans, if the economy does badly. Although Mr Trump has succeeded in suppressing illegal immigration, his national approval rating has already fallen further and faster than any other president’s, beating his own first-term record for annoying Americans.

Even on the most optimistic reading of the MAGA revolution, Mr Trump has already done lasting harm to America’s institutions, alliances and moral standing. And if he is thwarted by investors, voters or the courts, he is liable to lash out against institutions with even greater ferocity. Using the newly politicised Department of Justice, he may persecute his opponents and stir up the fear and conflict that give him licence to operate. Abroad, he could cause alliance-wrecking provocations in, say, Greenland or Panama. There is no going back to the way America was 100 days ago. Only 1,361 days left.

State and local governments across the United States confront pressure to reduce costs while meeting residents’ rising expectations. The Trump administration’s actions at the federal level may reduce or even stop federal funding across a range of programs, leaving state and local governments with the dilemma of whether to continue such services or let them sunset.  At the same time, the changes originating in Washington, DC, offer many opportunities for organizational change.

State and local governments could consider six actions to improve their efficiency and effectiveness to avoid this sort of unhealthy rebound.These actions have been tested in government organizations as well as businesses and not-for-profit organizations. Taken together, they can deliver lasting performance change in state and local government operations.

1. Simplify is about stopping nonessential work and reducing overall demand on a government’s processes, people, and systems. This step is where leaders can begin addressing efficiency and effectiveness. Sometimes this action involves stopping outdated programs or pilots. It can also involve rightsizing tasks. Often, simplifying begins with root cause problem-solving to identify what really is creating demands on the system.
2. Orchestrate involves redesigning processes to reduce handoffs, eliminate bottlenecks, and improve constituent experience. Approaches that draw on lean management and agile design—such as process mapping and opportunity identification—can provide powerful strategies.
3. Digitize builds upon the first two actions to integrate digital technologies and approaches to improve end-to-end processes for constituents and civil servants alike.  Think improved secure data sharing across government processes, such as a single web portal to navigate all government services, or job application systems that enable job seekers to view and apply for all relevant government positions at once through a common platform.
4. Automate holds great potential to improve government performance. This action involves incorporating the full spectrum of technologies, from improved desktop productivity software to generative AI systems that accelerate coding and customization of content such as personalized call-center responses.
5. Reorganize focuses on making sure that an organization’s pieces fit together to support the new ways of working now and in the future. Streamlining organizational structures and clarifying roles can accelerate decision-making. Reorganization also involves updating processes to improve collaboration within and across teams or agencies.
6. Strengthen involves building skills, capabilities, and mindsets across all levels of state and local government organizations so they can work in new ways and sustain change. This action enables all the others over the long haul.

Looking through the enterprise lens of a governor, mayor, or city manager highlights specific strategies to achieve cross-agency performance impact. The aspirations for such enterprise-wide impact should be high. Some state governments, for example, have recently identified between $300.0 million and $1.5 billion in potential savings by focusing on major enterprise-wide improvements. Five cross-agency performance measures offer the starting point for identifying and then capturing such impact.

1. Asset optimization involves getting the highest value out of the physical things that state and local governments own and lease, such as real estate, water rights, parks, office space, vehicles, and other equipment.
2. Lean operations uses time-tested techniques to redesign processes, adopt continuous improvement practices, and adapt systems to both improve user experience and reduce costs.
3. Technology modernization can propel major efficiencies as well as enable improved performance.
4. Procurement and vendor management provides a direct path to cost savings for state and local governments. Consolidation of spending across a government enterprise provides economies of scale in purchasing, and disciplined, analytical category management improves pricing and consistency in service delivery and terms.
5. Agile organization is about ensuring that governments have the right people in the right place at the right time to accelerate decision-making, improve accountability, ensure results, and deliver continuous improvement.

Since its introduction, the hype around AI, gen AI, and large language models (LLMs) has only amplified. User interest has doubled, investment in AI is skyrocketing, governments are taking more emphatic and explicit positions, and the stakes are about as high as they get—the future of humanity, according to some.  A year ago, the author researched and reported the Top-100 Gen AI Use Case, rated according to perceived usefulness and scale of impact.  He went for a sequel study.  

What Users Are Doing Now.  Here are some use cases from the top 100 this year.  Therapy/companionship (#1).  Organizing my life (#2).  Enhanced learning (#4).  Healthier living (#10).  Creating a travel itinerary (#24).  And Disputing a fine (#83).

Purpose and Meaning.  More and more of us are using LLMs to find purpose and improve ourselves.  Therapy and Companionship is now the #1 use case. This use case refers to two distinct but related use cases. Therapy involves structured support and guidance to process psychological challenges, while companionship encompasses ongoing social and emotional connection, sometimes with a romantic dimension.  The highest new entry in the use cases was “Organizing my life” at #2. These uses were mostly about people using the models to be more aware of their intentions (such as daily habits, New Year’s resolutions, and introspective insights) and find small, easy ways of getting started with them.  The other big new entry is “Finding purpose” in third place. Determining and defining one’s values, getting past roadblocks, and taking steps to self-develop (e.g., advising on what you should do next, reframing a problem, helping you to stay focused) all now feature frequently under this banner.  There were other entries further down the list for which we see AI helping us with the softer side of being human. We’re using AI to boost our confidence (#18), to have deep and meaningful conversations (#29), and even to try to engage with the deceased (#33).  Most experts expected that AI would prove itself first and best in technical areas. While it’s doing plenty there, this research suggests that AI may help us as much or more with our innately human whims and desires.

There was much disagreement and discord about whether the LLMs are a boon or bane for our own ability to think. On the other hand, the technology’s ability to enhance an individual’s learning and thinking was also acknowledged and celebrated.

More Sophisticated Users.  There were several indications that gen AI users in 2025 have now developed a deeper understanding along with a skepticism about gen AI, its creators, and the ecosystem it’s in.  The hottest cynical take is about the perceived political correctness of the LLMs. This may have been more pronounced over the course of the 2024 election year in the U.S.  Data privacy came up repeatedly, too. Enthusiasm for gen AI was frequently met with warnings about what Big Tech would do with the data it’s harvesting.  Ironically, another common complaint was that the LLMs don’t know enough about their users, i.e., that they don’t retain sufficient memory.  

What Next?  Online forums have always been fertile ground for idle speculation.  Most predictions anticipated either an extremely bad or extremely good end-state. One common and more nuanced forecast was the desire to see LLMs move from advice and information to doing, i.e., agentic behavior.

Videos where a sales agent breaks down the material cost of luxury goods, from handbags to perfumes to appliances—are everywhere on TikTok right now. Some videos claim, for example, that a pair of Lululemon leggings costs just $4 to make. Others show the scale and precision of Chinese manufacturing: Creators walk through spotless factory floors, passing automated assembly lines and teams of workers at clean, orderly stations. Some factories identify themselves as suppliers—or former suppliers—for brands like Dyson, Under Armour, and Victoria’s Secret.

Whether or not their claims are true, these videos and their virality speak to a new, serious push by Chinese manufacturers to connect directly with American consumers. Even with tariffs, many of the products pitched in the videos would still be significantly cheaper than buying from the name brands.

Fueled by fears of losing international business and frustration over Trump-era tariffs, factories are turning their production lines into content studios to market themselves—filming leather workshops and sewing lines, offering warehouse tours. What began as the work of a few frustrated sourcing agents has morphed into a full-blown genre that’s part protest, part marketing plan, part survival strategy.

The companies that sell directly to consumers include DHgate, a Chinese B2B e-commerce platform, which users commonly refer to as “the gate” or “the yellow app.” In the US Apple app store, the app jumped from #302 on April 8 to #2 overall in mid-April, just behind ChatGPT. On April 15, it was the most downloaded app in the country. As of April 18, DHgate sat at the top of Apple’s shopping charts in 98 countries.  TikTok is indeed not a vanity project for these manufacturers but a survival strategy in an increasingly competitive environment. 

Chinese factories have long sold to overseas markets, but when domestic economic growth started to slow in the past decade, manufacturers increasingly turned to major B2B platforms like Alibaba to connect with buyers abroad without relying on middlemen. In the past few years, however, the cost of gaining visibility to foreign buyers on major platforms like Amazon and Alibaba has skyrocketed.

The landscape only got more fraught as traditional manufacturing sectors struggled with oversupply and post-covid stagnation. In 2024, China’s apparel exports to the US grew by less than 1%, while the average unit price of those goods dropped by 7.6%—a sign that competition is fiercer and profit margins are shrinking. 

Add the new tariffs to this mix and Chinese manufacturers are increasingly motivated to find creative ways to reach buyers.  But it’s not just economic conditions pushing the viral videos; there’s also a feeling that Chinese work and craftsmanship are being disrespected.

Since 2020, factory videos showing assembly lines producing everyday items like wigs, dolls, and gloves have amassed millions of views.  By 2022, factories themselves recognized their work floors as content gold mines.

Despite the trend, experts don’t believe large numbers of average American consumers will shift to buying directly from factories, as the process involves too many logistical hurdles. There’s also been plenty of news coverage warning that you may not end up getting an all-but-equal-to-Hermès bag without the brand label.

In 2025, executives around the world are grappling with a common question: How do we really make the most of AI?

Successfully integrating AI goes far beyond just buying a few software licenses. It requires fostering a culture open to innovation, equipping employees with the skills they need, and ensuring AI actually adds value to teams’ day-to-day workflows. And it’s obvious that’s where the struggle begins for many organizations.  According to a recent Gallup poll, only 15% of employees say their organization has communicated a clear plan or strategy for integrating AI into how they get work done.

Marriott empowers employees to drive grassroots AI innovation.  This global hospitality brand has invested $1.2 billion in new technology and is championing employee-led AI innovation. From the bottom up, Marriott is incentivizing the development of AI solutions in an internal AI incubator.   Focusing on enabling staff to spearhead technological advancements has resulted in more than 150 new ideas. It has increased company-wide curiosity and open-mindedness about AI while ensuring that the solutions are practical and enhance employees’ core job functions. Marriott’s AI explorations center around freeing employees to focus on curating better guest experiences rather than burdening them with unnecessary complexity.

PwC combines hands-on AI training with human oversight.  PricewaterhouseCoopers is another company at the forefront of AI adoption, backing its commitment with a $1 billion investment focused on cutting-edge technology, hands-on training, and the critical role of human oversight. A standout initiative is its “prompting parties,” where employees engage in gamified AI learning and ideation. Employees practice AI skills in a fun, supportive environment, honing their ability to work with generative AI tools. PwC has also introduced AI mentors to further employee education in artificial intelligence.  But it’s not just about what AI can do for people; PwC also acknowledges that AI needs to be used responsibly, so they’ve set up feedback loops where employees validate AI outputs and ensure they comply with ethical standards.

Ikea tailors AI training.  The Swedish furniture retailer’s AI journey highlights the importance of tailored, role-specific training. Ikea’s ambitious AI literacy program aims to train 3,000 employees and 500 company leaders, offering a mix of in-person and virtual learning experiences. From AI basics to more advanced topics like algorithmic ethics, Ikea ensures its workforce can use AI in ways relevant to their roles.  For leadership, initiatives like “AI Exploration Days” provide a strategic framework for integrating AI with business objectives. This comprehensive training approach empowers Ikea’s workforce to employ AI for tasks including idea generation, image creation, and enhancing creativity.

S&P Global goes big on AI training and benchmarking.  This analytics and consulting firm is equipping a whopping 35,000 employees with the skills needed to integrate generative AI into their day-to-day work. The comprehensive program—launched in August—builds AI fluency across all levels, from financial analysts to customer service teams, tailoring the learning to business-specific needs.  S&P’s key differentiator is an emphasis on rigorous AI benchmarking and evaluation of AI-generated results. The company ensures compliance with ethical standards and high accuracy by validating AI outputs through standardized metrics. This enables the company to deploy AI confidently across its operations, driving innovation while maintaining accountability.

Leading through chaos isn’t about control — it’s about learning how to ride the storm.

To help today’s leaders do that, MIT has gathered timely insights from MIT SMR authors — researchers and executives who are experts in numerous aspects of managing during uncertain and chaotic times. MIT also reached back for a few lessons gleaned during the pandemic that are quite useful right now. Use these strategies to steer your business, your team, and yourself through the ongoing disruption.

1. Build resilience for surprises.  “Given the unpredictability and multidimensional nature of political risk, it is more important than ever for companies to invest in being better prepared to deal with the often rapid impact of political surprises. This resilience may take different forms — for example, ensuring flexibility to recover critical operations quickly (such as by investing in a diverse supply chain, such that inputs or suppliers can be switched quickly when tariffs are put in place); setting up buffers against potential shocks (such as by diversifying the product portfolio or building up amounts of cash); or creating a modular supply chain (such that the impact of shocks is contained).  “Making such moves requires adopting a mindset that balances efficiency with the longer-term considerations of creating value through differential preparedness.”
2. Train teams to not freeze.  “One common emotional response to uncertainty is freezing. Of the business leaders who participated in MIT research, 32% said they have felt paralyzed by uncertainty when it was time to act. Even more, 42%, said they have put off thinking about decisions because it is uncomfortable. … Treating decisions as experiments can make a difference. …
3. Toss out the crystal ball — strengthen your change muscles instead.  “The belief that successful leaders and companies can predict the future, set a clear direction, and stay the course doesn’t encourage people to reevaluate assumptions or to start, stop, and change direction. … Adaptive companies may seem like they are always two steps ahead, but the key is not the ability to predict which way the wind will blow but rather the ability to sense the prevailing winds and adapt quickly to ride with them.”
4. Expect to be uncomfortable.  “Acknowledge that as a leader, you get to live in uncomfortable places that are never going to get comfortable. Uncertainty about the future is one of those places, and you will be a better leader for admitting the limits of your knowledge — and the limits of risk management and probabilistic thinking.”
5. Focus your team on medium-term goals.  “Looking three months out can create a longer-term sense of stability for your people, but it’s a short enough time period that, even if things shift around you, you likely won’t have to change your mission. … As Jamie Woolf and Heidi Rosenfelder, founders of Creativity Partners, advise, ‘To better enlist your team in the cocreation of the future, try asking questions like “What new sources of profit can replace dwindling ones?” or “What can we do to break down silos within our team?” ’ ”
6. Customize the calm.  “During times of uncertainty, different employees want different kinds of support delivered in different ways. … Managers must prioritize two behaviors: individualized consideration and building trust. … By prioritizing employees’ individual needs and understanding their fears, managers can target and address the sources of their uncertainty in a volatile environment.”
7. Communicate that you’re all in it together.  “Send regular messages to employees that emphasize ‘we’ and ‘us.’ Employees pay more attention to certain messengers than others. … By using collective pronouns and language, leaders can help reinforce a sense of safety and moral support among workers.”
8. Say something before the silence does.  “In difficult times, employees need to know the company’s actual status as soon as is reasonably possible. If you’re not giving your employees regular updates, they’ll make up what they don’t know to fill the information vacuum. Leaders need not worry about overproducing or overediting what they say; the most important thing is to speak and write in an authentic voice — and do it promptly.
9. Cultivate sensemaking at all levels.  “Sensemaking involves pulling together disparate views to create a plausible understanding of the complexity around us and then testing that understanding to refine it or, if necessary, abandon it and start over. … It is considered essential for innovation and crucial to the development of nimble teams and organizations.
10. And Prioritize the crisis; ignore the noise.

Earlier this month, music industry matriarch Tina Knowles – mother of music superstars Beyonce Knowles Carter and Solange Knowles – released her life story. Knowles’s memoir Matriarch offers an intimate and in-depth look behind the scenes of one of the music industry’s most successful families. But Knowles’s story describes not only the genesis of her family’s music industry fame, but also her family story. She shares the humble journey from poverty in Galveston, Texas to how she eventually became a successful business woman in her own right.  Here are eight life and career lessons from Matriarch, Knowles’ new memoir.

1. Tap Into Your Core Desire To Solve A Problem.  While she is well-known for helping manage her famous daughters, Knowles was a successful business owner in Houston before her daughters found fame. In the memoir, Knowles tells the origin story of her business success, and how despite her lack of formal business training, she tapped into her desire to make women feel beautiful. Building on that desire, she zeroed in on professional women’s lack of time to spend in hair salons. She built her first salon Headliners into an oasis for busy women, specializing in getting them in and out in record time, so they could get back to work. By tapping into her passion to make women feel beautiful and confident and working to address a clear problem her customers had, she was able to build a successful business which, according to her memoir, grossed half a million dollars in the first year.
2. You Already Have What You Need To Do Something Amazing.  Knowles tells story after story of how she and her family members turned their passions for sewing, beauty, or art into lucrative income streams. Her mother was a talented seamstress whose work kept her poor family afloat during Knowles’ childhood. She taught her daughter and other family members to sew as well.  While Knowles didn’t attend fashion or business school, she went on to later build her ready-to-wear fashion line House of Dereon into a fashion brand which was eventually acquired in 2011.
3. Allow Yourself To Meet Yourself.  After her first marriage dissolved, Knowles was overwhelmed by sadness, and decided to take a one-month sabbatical from work. Away from the demands of the office, she allowed herself to truly rest for the first time in her life. During this time, she enlisted a therapist to help her focus on herself and navigate the emotional fallout from her divorce. Her therapist encouraged her to make a list of both her biggest failures as well as her successes. By writing out the list of her wins, Knowles was able to see herself and her situation more clearly and begin to reclaim her sense of self worth. Her list of wins overshadowed her list of failures and sparked a new journey to self-acceptance and self-love.
4. Reframe Your Differences.  Throughout the book, Knowles frames her differences as the assets that helped her stand out and eventually make her mark. While she lamented her core insecurity that she wasn’t respected as a fashion designer, or that her lack of formal education made her a target for ridicule, she repeatedly illustrated how having a different perspective helped her to see what others couldn’t. Existing outside of the fashion establishment allowed her to take chances and make artistic choices as Destiny’ Child’s and later Beyonce’s stylist that contributed to their stage presence. The artists built their brands both on their musical talent and the signature style Knowles created for them.
5. Passion And Dedication Can Still Lead To Burnout.  Years after her famous daughters had made their mark, Knowles was still dutifully performing the tasks of Beyonce’s stylist and confidante, going on tour with her daughter, pulling together last-minute stage looks before each performance. The grueling work took its toll, and though Knowles says she prized the responsibility of motherhood and enjoyed sharing her gift for styling with her daughter, she’d neglected herself in her dedication to those roles. Exhausted, she embarked on what she called her “selfish era” and dedicated herself to exploration and self-care.
6. You Don’t Have to Work To Earn Your Worth.  Growing up in the segregated South, Knowles’s mother taught her that having skills that others needed – like sewing and dressmaking – could provide resources and protection. But Knowles inadvertently absorbed the idea that her work was her way to earn love. She wrote how she later had to unlearn this idea. Though she loved her work, as an adult she realized she didn’t have to work to earn her worth.
7. No Season Is Wasted.  One of the recurring themes in Matriarch is how the seeds planted in earlier seasons of her life as well as life lessons handed down from previous generations of women in her family eventually sprout and bloom.  Knowles’s journey clearly illustrates the principle that no season is wasted. What appears as a failure today may resurface in future years as a point of inspiration or the foundation on which you can build something new.
8. Don’t Count Yourself Out.  In the book, Knowles shares a number of her financial and personal setbacks.  Knowles’s story of resilience highlights the reality that while most people will inevitably face hardships in life, you can always begin again if you still have yourself.

According to the author every entrepreneur he knows has said, at one time or another, that, if they had any idea of how tough the journey to build a new business was going to be, they would never have started in the first place.  Successful entrepreneurs are a special breed, and they only know one direction and one pace, which is forward and full speed ahead. You can call it undue optimism, perseverance, passion or just plain orneriness, but they don’t quit. They’ve got too much of themselves invested in the effort to think any other way.  Many serial entrepreneurs learned not to be afraid of the future when their early ventures failed, and the sky didn’t fall. Bad news and bumps in the road are just business as usual. If they get knocked down, they’re the first ones to pick themselves up and get back in the game. Pundits call you stubborn when you fail, but persistent when you succeed.

One of the mistakes entrepreneurs often make as they rush ahead even in hard times is to believe that they’re automatically bringing all the troops along with them. And that they’re doing a good job of communicating and getting their message through to the others in the business when, in fact, most of the team members have no idea of what’s going on and how the business is really doing.

If you want your people to get back to business and to pay attention to what needs to get done every day, you’ve got to take the time to tell them a few key things. They’re all walking on eggshells right now and you’ve got to speak up and wake them up. Here are five important things to tell them.

1. No one’s getting fired for making mistakes. We all make mistakes and they’re a healthy and important part of the growth process. The key is to make ‘em, learn from ‘em, and then forget about ‘em.  Putting them behind you – we call it “in-game amnesia” – so you can move ahead is the most critical thing you need to do. But trying to hide a mistake or a problem is a guaranteed ticket out the door.
2. Failures are also par for the course. They happen – they’re unavoidable – and we expect them. But two kinds of failure are not acceptable: failing to ask for help when you need it and failing to offer help when you’re asked. We’re a team – no one does anything important all by themselves – and we have each other’s backs.
3. We’re still standing. Five awful years after the pandemic, our firm is still up and operating and nothing makes us prouder or confirms that what we’re doing is worth the blood, sweat and tears we’ve all shed. Because our work matters to ourselves and others as well. We’re being careful and conservative and we’re building and rebuilding our important relationships with our loyal clients and customers, supportive vendors and partners, and patient investors.
4. Parts of the startup journey are always uphill. We shouldn’t expect that our path will be any different, but we’ll weather any future storms and make any required sacrifices that may be necessary bolstered by the knowledge that all these ups and downs will be borne and shared by the entire team.  
5. Entrepreneurs never say “thank you” enough. Tell the team that you’re grateful for their work, loyalty, and personal sacrifices. You can never say it too much.

As CEO of Bayegan Group, according to the author, she has spent her career operating at the crossroads of global energy trade and geopolitics. The energy sector is one of the most volatile industries in the world — vulnerable to the decisions of governments, shipping and logistics constraints, the pace of technology and market sentiment.  But these conditions are no longer unique to energy. Today, every entrepreneur, regardless of their industry, is being asked to navigate an environment where tides are constantly changing.

1. Embracing strategic agility.  Strategic agility then becomes the most valuable asset in a company’s arsenal. This doesn’t mean abandoning vision for improvisation, but rather designing that vision with enough elasticity to account for the unexpected. Diversification is often talked about in risk terms, but the authors sees it as a tool of opportunity. When Shell made the deliberate pivot to liquefied natural gas (LNG), it was hedging against the decline of oil profits.  But it was also repositioning itself for a future where gas would become the key transition fuel — more politically palatable than coal, more scalable than solar and more easily transportable than hydrogen. This was pre-emptive agility embedded into strategic DNA, rather than a reactionary move (as some cynics might argue).  At BGN, our logistics network spans multiple shipping routes because we expect disruption. By the same token, operating in many markets provides insulation. Whether operating in Türkiye, the Gulf, Africa or Asia, the growth corridors we operate in are insulated from one another.
2. Multi-layered risk management.  Geopolitics are shifting and demand a nuanced and proactive approach to risk management. The conflict in Ukraine and ensuing market chaos made this abundantly clear — Europe scrambled to reduce its over-reliance on Russian gas but had no plan.  In the absence of alternatives, policymakers are forced to react to crises with blunt instruments — emergency subsidies, rationing or hasty trade deals, to name a few.  But when the private sector has already laid the groundwork for supply diversity by investing in critical infrastructure, cultivating global relationships or expanding renewables, it gives governments room to maneuver and provides options.
3. Leading through uncertainty with transparency.  Communication is a leadership function that sets the tone for how a company is perceived during a crisis. It doesn’t require certainty, but it does demand clarity about how you’re responding.  The most effective leaders don’t speculate or deflect; they communicate data-driven responses and demonstrate proactive thinking, even when facing uncertainty.
4. Learning from experience: Real-world case studies.  Some of the most valuable lessons the author  has taken forward as a leader have come from crises that forced them to re-examine standard practices.  Now, more than ever, it is crucial that organizations deepen their risk modelling. Mapping the political cycles, trade exposure and social volatility is just as crucial as economic forecasts. This has allowed my firm to match sourcing strategies to risk profiles, to stagger our commitments where needed, and, if necessary, to walk away from tempting opportunities that do not provide certainty.
5. Data-driven decision making: Staying ahead.  One of the most undervalued leadership skills is the ability to pause in a moment of noise and ask: What does the data actually say? Decision-making grounded in emotion or urgency can become a liability, yet it’s difficult to avoid in the world I’ve so far described. The leaders who outperform are rarely the loudest or the boldest. They’re the ones who build their reactions on substance.
6. Looking ahead: Future-proofing your business.  Future-proofing a business requires embedding resilience into strategy, continuously anticipating changes and proactively adapting to emerging challenges. It asks a different question: What are you building into your business today that will still hold value when the playing field changes tomorrow?
7. Building long-term resilience.  Leaders do not choose when disruptions happen, but they control how prepared they are to respond and guide others through the change. The past few years have made this clear across industries: agility, risk management and transparent communication are requirements, no longer just advantages.  Resilience stems from disciplined planning for multiple outcomes. This is again reinforced by investing in clarity — whether through data, relationships or internal alignment. It endures when your team, your partners and your stakeholders trust that you will not crumble the moment the winds change.  The most forward-thinking leaders let go of the illusion that resilience is about knowing what’s coming. Agility, risk management and transparency are not optional but essential for long-term resilience.