Irregular: More Concerned, Less Prepared
How CEOs think about geopolitics
Hello from Melbourne,
In today’s Irregular, I am pleased to announce the release of what is, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive survey of chief executives exclusively focused on geopolitics yet conducted — a partnership with The CEO Institute, a peer group network of over 5,000 CEOs across the Asia-Pacific.
What the data shows
The report — More Concerned, Less Prepared: How Australian CEOs Think About Geopolitical Risk — draws on a national survey of over 300 CEOs and business leaders conducted in September and October 2025, complemented by a series of in-person scenario planning workshops we facilitated with CEO Institute syndicates in Melbourne and Sydney, and a poll of around one hundred CEOs taken during an interactive crisis briefing I gave on the Iran war in April. It is not a pretty picture.
The headline numbers are striking. When we polled CEOs in late 2025, a clear majority said they were more concerned about geopolitics and trade disruption than they were twelve months prior. Almost none were less concerned. When we asked the same question two weeks ago, every single CEO said they were more concerned than they were just six months earlier. Last year may well have been an annus horribilis for many chief executives. This year has so far been an annus really horribilis.
Beyond the headlines is where it gets much more interesting. There will be little surprise that today, 68% of CEOs rank energy price volatility and supply constraints as their number one geopolitical concern, followed by 41% who cite political instability or populism in major democracies, and 27% who nominate instability and conflict in the Middle East. The geographical origin of that concern is Iran, but the political origin is the United States.
That concern about the direction of the United States runs as a throughline across the report. It shows up in mounting anxiety about the fracturing of Western alliances — nominated as a top concern by 24% of CEOs in April, up from just 7% in September — and in political instability and populism in major democracies, jumping to 41% from 13%. Strategic competition over critical minerals and supply chains has moved from 6% to 19%. Meanwhile, concern about US trade policy shifts has held steady at around 18-19% — no longer top of the list, but only overtaken by the immediate fallout of the Iran war.
What is perhaps most striking is that the United States has now emerged, in the eyes of chief executives, as the country with the most complex mix of risk and opportunity after China. Gone are the days of the United States having clearly more upside than downside.
The results around corporate responses struck me as the most important findings in the report. Only 7% of chief executives say their firms have made significant structural changes in response to geopolitical uncertainty. Only 12% treat geopolitical risk as a core part of strategic planning. And by far the most common answer to the question “what has your organisation actually done?” — at 70% when the survey was conducted — is “nothing”.
We call that the problem–solution gap. It is, in my view, the defining challenge for business leaders right now, and the one I find myself discussing most often with board chairs, directors, and chief executives.
Why the gap exists — and why it matters
The gap is understandable. For decades, most companies have largely been insulated from the geopolitical travails of the world. That is especially true for firms from Australia — a continent unto itself, girt by sea, sitting behind the world’s largest moat — where most respondents to the survey live.
But no matter where a country operates, responding to geopolitical risk can seem expensive, particularly when it involves structural change, supply chain restructuring, or building internal capability. All of that requires budget and cultural change.
More fundamentally, however, the gap persists — in my view, based on many conversations with leaders over the past few years — because bridging it requires a belief that a company can actually do something to improve its geopolitical resilience, rather than simply being a passive victim of the vicissitudes of fortune.
That attitude is changing. The chief executives I speak with are increasingly of the view that geopolitics can, in fact, be managed — not by changing the world, but by developing a much more precise and granular understanding of how geopolitical disruptions transmit into firm-level impacts. How imagined threats can be turned into governable risks using probability estimates grounded in forecasting best practice and rough financial impact assessments. How material risks can be monitored without drowning in noise. And how practical frameworks can help work out how to minimise exposure while identifying where opportunity lies.
One revealing aspect of the scenario planning workshops was watching how chief executives gauged four alternative geopolitical futures. Two things stood out. First, all four very different worlds were thought not only plausible but of roughly similar likelihood — a genuine uncertainty that is itself a finding. Second, the world that consistently ranked as most probable was what we called a “Godfather World”: truly multipolar, with power fragmented across multiple major states and international institutions and shared norms becoming a quaint relic of the past. A world where there are no clear rules, where “might makes right”, and where deals of the sort the Five Families would recognise are struck, reneged upon and constantly renegotiated — and enforced not by law but by leverage, threats, and the implicit threat of violence. Sound familiar?
From the data to you
While the findings in the report are largely Australian findings — reflecting a trading economy with deep energy exposure, an alliance relationship that is valued and economically complicated in roughly equal measure, and a geographic position that makes Indo-Pacific dynamics commercial as well as strategic — the broad patterns will be recognisable to business leaders almost anywhere.
The gap between awareness and adaptation, the tendency to treat geopolitical risk as essentially unintelligible and therefore unmanageable, and the difficulty of translating global analysis into firm-specific action are universal challenges.
While the specific risk hierarchy will always look different depending on your geography, your footprint, your suppliers, and your customers, the report has, I believe, a general utility for any business leader wishing to come to grips with what issues could affect their firm — and what options are available to manage them.
If the findings prompt questions about how they apply to your specific context — your sector, your geography, your board — I would be glad to hear from you.
Best wishes,
Damien
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