When it comes to business planning, we like to learn from the experts. During On your Marks, the launch of Wavelength Connect 2025, we bring world-class speakers together to share their personal experience of navigating today’s business landscape. This year, Sanjeevan Bala, Group Chief Data and AI Officer at ITV, shared his experience of rolling out a major change programme. His story prompted many conversations in the room of over 60 business leaders, regarding the successful execution of enterprise-wide transformation programmes. And in a world where data and AI is stimulating such disruption and unpredictability, how can leaders even begin to think about planning in a world where the parameters are changing daily. Inspired by Sanjeevan’s story, we’ve pulled together 7 key considerations to form an essential guide for any business leaders, finding themselves challenged with future planning  in an unpredictable world. The big questions we heard, that are facing today’s leaders:

• How do we balance being reactive versus proactive, as we dance between consistency and agility?
• How do we steer our organisations with clarity and certainty when the rules are constantly changing?
• How do we scenario planning when there is such unpredictability?

A Future Planning Guide for Business Leaders

 1. The Paradox of Business Planning in Uncertainty

In today’s world, strategic planning often feels like trying to navigate a ship in a storm with no clear horizon. We’re facing relentless waves of disruption: economic volatility, geopolitical tension, climate emergencies, AI advancements, and societal shifts—all colliding in real time. The pace of change is no longer linear. It’s exponential and erratic.

For senior leaders, this creates a paradox. We are expected to provide clarity, vision, and direction—but the very nature of the environment resists certainty. Traditional planning methods—annual strategy documents, five-year roadmaps, linear forecasts—often feel outdated the moment they’re completed.

And yet, abdicating the responsibility to plan is not an option. The question is not whether we plan, but how we plan differently.

2. Shift the Mindset: From Prediction to Preparedness

The first step is to let go of the need to predict. Prediction assumes a level of control we simply don’t have. Instead, leaders need to adopt a mindset rooted in preparedness.

This means developing the ability to see around corners—not with crystal-ball certainty, but with curiosity, discipline, and a willingness to challenge assumptions. Preparedness is about readiness, not rigidity. It’s the ability to respond quickly, intelligently, and intentionally, even when the terrain is shifting underfoot. And in this, to remain comfortable with change and uncertainty knowing that you have considered the options and yes, there is a good chance something completely different and unexpected will likely crop up. And that’s ok. When you have a strong team, make space for the necessary conversations and robust decision-making skills, you’ve got this.

An example of this inpractice was Microsoft’s Adaptive Strategy Model in response to customer demand for agility. In the early 2010s, under Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft made a conscious pivot from rigid long-term forecasting to an adaptive strategy model. Rather than locking into multi-year technology bets, the company invested in platforms that could flex with emerging needs—like Azure cloud and cross-platform software. They began using “strategy refresh cycles” that allowed teams to regularly revisit assumptions and make iterative adjustments based on what they were learning from customers and market shifts.

This shift helped Microsoft transition from a desktop software giant into a cloud-first, AI-forward enterprise—one that’s still evolving today.

Leaders need to recognise that scenario planning, horizon scanning, and continuous sense-making have become essential disciplines—not just side projects. Adopting an adaptive strategy through agile leadership will allow organizations to explore multiple plausible futures and build resilience into their strategies.

3. Principles for Business Planning in a Volatile World

To plan effectively in uncertain times, leaders need new and enhanced principles—ways of thinking and acting that are fit for complexity:

• Anchor your Plans to Purpose: A clear, compelling purpose becomes your strategic ‘north star’. When everything else is in flux, a strong sense of why will help to keep your teams aligned and focused.

• Stay Horizontally Curious: Great insights often come from unexpected places. Leaders who scan beyond their industry—into technology, culture, science, and society—spot signals others miss and then they think laterally about what this might mean for them and their organisation.

• Create Optionality: Don’t bet the future on a single scenario. Build strategic flexibility by investing in multiple paths, pilots, and partnerships that allow for course correction. Review, adjust, align, repeat.

• Invest in Agility, Not Just Strategy: Agile isn’t a buzzword—it’s a muscle that needs developing through flexing. The organizations that thrive are those that can shift resources, priorities, and mindsets quickly and coherently.

• Empower the Edges: Innovation and insight often live at the edges of the organization—those that exist and operate closer to customers, communities, and emerging trends. Give those voices influence and space to be heard.

One of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, Unilever, successfully embedded agile innovation labs in local markets—particularly in Asia and Africa. These teams were empowered to rapidly prototype and launch products tailored to local consumer behaviors. One notable example is a low-cost shampoo sachet designed in India, which became a model for several emerging markets.

By pushing decision-making closer to where change happens, Unilever built responsiveness into its global strategy while still staying true to its core purpose and values.

4. Embrace and Build on Proven Tools

Planning in uncertainty requires an expanded toolbox. Here are a few high-impact techniques for senior teams:

• Scenario Planning: Develop multiple future worlds and stress-test your strategies against each one. What would we do if…?

• Future Mapping: Map out first-, second-, and third-order impacts of major shifts (e.g., mass AI adoption). It’s a way to visualize connected consequences.

• Pre-Mortems: Instead of waiting for failure, imagine you’ve already failed. What went wrong? This reverse approach surfaces hidden risks early and supports a mindshift towards preparedness.

• Red Teaming: Invite a diverse internal group to challenge your assumptions, identify blind spots, and offer contrarian perspectives. Todd Yellin, Netflix, refers to this as ‘farming for dissent’ and cites this as a critical success factor in building a culture of innovation during his tenure at the organization.

• Real-Time Sense-making: Use dashboards, internal forums, and customer listening posts or groups to keep your finger on the pulse of change—not annually, but continuously.

5. Culture is your Compass

In times of volatility, culture becomes the hidden engine of effective strategy. Planning tools matter—but it’s the organizational culture that determines whether those plans live or die. AirBnB demonstrated exactly this kind of resilience when COVID-19 devastated the travel industry. Airbnb’s revenue dropped by 80% in eight weeks. Rather than freeze, they moved quickly—cutting costs, doubling down on core products, and transparently communicating both internally and externally.

Founder Brian Chesky’s honest and human leadership—including a heartfelt public letter to departing employees—was widely praised. Airbnb didn’t just recover; they returned to the market with a clearer brand, a stronger culture, and a business model built around longer stays and remote work trends.

Their ability to act fast was rooted in a resilient, values-driven culture that had been cultivated long before the crisis hit.

When it comes to culture, the following conditions all rank high of the list of must-haves:

• Psychological Safety: Teams must feel safe to speak uncomfortable truths, challenge leadership, and question the status quo without fear.

• Learning Mindset: Treat experiments as learning labs. Normalize adaptation. Celebrate teams that try, learn, and improve—even if the first attempt fails. Some of the most successful organizations we work with celebrate failure as a critical part of the process.

• Tone from the Top: Leaders create the weather (Bob Anderson) which means they set the emotional temperature. Calm, curiosity, and clarity from the top enables a culture of resilience and responsiveness.

6. A New Role for Leadership

The traditional image of the leader as the “planner-in-chief” needs to evolve. In today’s environment, senior leaders must become:

• Storytellers: Connecting trends, signals, and data into a coherent narrative of direction and possibility.

• Sensemakers: Helping teams interpret what’s happening in the world and what it means for the organization.

• Clarity Creators: Simplifying complexity without dumbing it down. The need to provide focus in the fog.

Leadership is no longer about commanding certainty. It’s about guiding with clarity and confidence in the absence of it.

7. Planning with Courage

At its core, future planning is an act of leadership courage. It’s not about having all the answers—it’s about creating the conditions where your colleagues, employees and teams can thrive, adapt, and lead into the unknown with confidence and preparedness.

The world will continue to be uncertain. But with the right mindset, tools, and culture, your organization can be ready—not for any one future, but for whatever future emerges.