Irregular: Enterprising solutions
How businesses can monitor the rapidly changing world order.
Hello from Sydney,
In my last Irregular column, I looked at how historically significant geopolitical changes, happening in real time, are increasingly difficult to track owing to the media often obscuring more than it reveals. My argument was that it was harder than ever for individuals to to stay abreast of important geopolitical shifts without drowning in noise or, worse, losing their minds. The challenge – and what’s at stake – is even greater for corporations.
Unlike individuals, organisations may not be able to technically lose their minds (some may beg to differ). And, unlike most people, corporations tend to feel the impacts of geopolitical shifts directly and significantly. Companies are always at risk – and stand to benefit – from competition between states. But there’s never been a straighter through-line from geopolitics to bottom line as today.
Just take the past few weeks.
Companies the world over have been scrambling to assess their exposure to new and threatened American tariffs. The braver among them have been eyeing opportunities that could suddenly arise in the hitherto toxic Russian market should sanctions soon be lifted. US defence executives would have lost a few nights’ sleep after President Trump’s proposal to halve defence spending. Share prices across industries have yo-yo’d approximating the heart rates of shareholders, as traders react to the daily barrage of news. But nowhere is the anxiety felt so deeply as in European boardrooms. And for good reason, too.
No soup for you
Of all the many departures from tradition in the new Trump administration, perhaps the greatest (so far) may be his approach to Europe. Trump has not only demanded more NATO defence spending but he has largely cut European leaders out of the most important discussion on European security – ending the war in Ukraine – and dispatched his vice president to tell them their greatest threats come not from without, but from within. Old assumptions about the inviolability of the transatlantic alliance, the importance and even existence of shared values, and the reliability of the United States as a security guarantor have quickly been relegated to the dustbin of history.
European executives’ main concern just the week prior – higher costs exporting to America – may turn out to be small beer compared to a broader shift to a multipolar, sphere-of-influence world where the United States, Russia and China call the shots on international security while Europe is left to defend itself (with underwhelming forces) and global commerce reverts to a system of imperial preferences (when Europe’s economy lacks in dynamism and innovation).
Although let’s be real: most headlines proclaiming “the day the West died” (or similar) after a Trump-Putin phone call and JD Vance’s criticism of European governance and migration policy are overblown. Significant, yes. But also overblown. Vance did, in fact, reiterate the alliance. The vice president did not announce a breakup, although he suggested Europe needed to lift its game and the dynamics of the relationship would change. And while Trump’s engagements with Xi and Putin send a strong signal that the transatlantic relationship is no longer a monogamous one, there’s a long way before the new throuple goes up the aisle.
No wonder the data shows that geopolitics has become a first-order concern for business leaders everywhere, not just in Europe.
Master of my domain
The leading Natixis and Bank of America surveys of institutional investors and global fund managers in 2024 ranked geopolitics as the biggest risk. So, too, have recent surveys of corporate executives by firms such as McKinsey, EY, BCG and KPMG. And, as Philipp Ivanov, a senior advisor at Geopolitical Strategy, found in recent interviews with 70 executives, risk managers and board members in the United States, Latin America and Australia, most business leaders agree that geopolitical risks are not only on the rise but their impacts are more profound and real to the business community.
Just as it is hard for individuals to monitor – with sanity – today’s rapid and profound geopolitical changes, companies are also struggling.
Traditional approaches have serious deficiencies.
Relying solely on the media risks misreading trends, missing signals and reacting to noise (“the day the West died”). Media monitoring services ensure comprehensive media coverage but only multiply the problem and provide no additional layer of analysis: great for tracking sentiment towards a company but not for reading the geopolitical tea leaves. Periodically engaging consultants or experts is certainly useful but can hardly be done regularly, systematically or easily for the benefit of an entire organisation. And while creating in-house teams that can help interpret the world through the prism of an organisation’s interests is a massive and welcome step up, even those in dedicated “geopolitical risk units” or similar will face all these challenges to manage themselves (while also tending to the day-to-day).
There are also more subtle challenges for corporates. When executives and boards are staying up-to-date using their own media sources, they are often not going to be “on the same page”, operating off different facts, assumptions and worldviews. That’s good from an avoiding groupthink perspective. But it also misses taking a more systematic approach, getting a truly global perspective, and ingesting content that contains sober analysis relevant to business, and delivered with a timeliness appropriate for decision-making.
An additional challenge is the fact that geopolitics today affects so many different business functions, from legal and regulatory to human resources to finance and supply chain management. Legal counsel can get ahead of compliance risks arising from changes to trade rules and sanctions by looking over the geopolitical horizon. Supply chain managers would do well to pay close attention to international political dynamics that could materially redefine trade routes, increase shipping costs and suddenly blacklist foreign suppliers. And finance functions must grapple with volatile currencies and resource prices. All of which makes having a generally well-informed staff – not just the most senior leaders – a way to offset risk and gain strategic advantages over less savvy competitors.
Serenity now
That’s why we designed Geopolitical Dispatch not just for individuals, but as a scalable solution for enterprises.
Our Daily Dispatches, modelled on the US President’s Daily Brief, analyse five developments in 200 words each, providing the breadth of media monitoring with the depth of an intelligence assessment and without the sensationalism of the news. Our Saturday essay, Week Signals, helps businesses understand the deeper trends at play as well as providing a practical list of five things to watch for in the week ahead. And our monthly webinars and private roundtables allow enterprise subscription clients to engage regularly with our analysts and senior advisors, many of whom have served as high-ranking ambassadors in key capitals – providing access to expertise to decipher not only what is happening but why it matters and how it impacts their organisation.
In short, our enterprise plans – with scaling pricing – allow firms to monitor and, ultimately, manage geopolitical risk in a cost-effective manner using exactly the same methodology that diplomatic and intelligence services use to manage a country’s geopolitical risk.
We offer three tiers for companies wishing to take geopolitics seriously:
Team: For five to twenty access points for GD Professional for $390 per person, per year. This gives users full access to our daily analyses, weekly in-depth assessments, and monthly client roundtable – and is ideal for smaller organisations.
Enterprise: For twenty-one to one hundred access points for GD Professional for $350 per person per year. In addition to all the benefits of the Team subscription, enterprise clients also get a quarterly private briefing with our Chief Strategist and the option to commission bespoke research and strategy advice on a project basis – ideal for larger organisations with greater exposure to geopolitical risk.
Retainer: Unlimited access points for GD Professional with all the benefits of the Enterprise tier plus dedicated advisory hours per month for commissioned research, briefs and advice as well as access to our senior advisors for deep strategic advice.
If you would like to explore any of these options in more detail or purchase a subscription for your organisation, please contact us directly.
Wishing you all the best,
Damien Bruckard
CEO, Geopolitical Strategy
 | A guest post by
|