Part III
The world has never been so rich in data - or so poor in certainty. Paradoxically, most companies still try to manage this flood of information as if it were 1998, relying on Excel spreadsheets and next-quarter forecasts. Professor Rudy Aernoudt puts it bluntly: “Seventy percent of CFOs still plan in Excel. It’s like trying to predict the tides by looking at last month’s weather report.”
Traditional forecasting assumes that the future will resemble the past. Foresight, by contrast, begins with the opposite premise - that the future will behave differently, and that companies must model it through scenarios, not linear projections. Aernoudt calls this “thinking in possibilities rather than probabilities.” It is not fortune-telling; it is preparation - an intellectual form of insurance against the unpredictable.
The idea is not new. In the 1970s, Shell famously built a hypothetical scenario around a global oil shortage. When the 1973 oil crisis hit, Shell was among the few companies ready to act while others were still trying to understand what had happened. That ability to anticipate, rather than react, became its strategic advantage.
Today, this kind of scenario thinking has moved from luxury to necessity. Every company - whether a carmaker in Munich or a tech startup in Vilnius - must map its own geopolitical risk landscape. One scenario may involve a China–Taiwan confrontation. Another, a sudden inflation surge or a supply-chain collapse. A third could be a cyberattack that paralyses operations within hours.
Aernoudt suggests starting not with predictions but with questions. What if China’s deflation deepens to six percent, eroding the competitiveness of European exports? What if the Russian banking system collapses and payments freeze? What if a cyberattack disables key suppliers or government systems? These are not speculative questions; they are exercises in strategic hygiene.
Scenario planning, properly done, reshapes an organisation’s culture. The traditional budgeting ritual - guessing next year’s profit - becomes less relevant in a world of rolling shocks. Foresight requires broader vision: recognising that roughly 45 percent of a company’s results depend on external geopolitical forces, not internal operations. “We spend enormous time analysing our competitors,” Aernoudt says, “and almost none analysing the world around us - even though it determines half our outcomes.”
This method demands a new discipline: strategic imagination. It means visualising both the best and worst possible futures - and being prepared for each. Scenario analysis, Aernoudt insists, is not an exercise in fear; it is an act of optimism. “Only those who imagine a crisis before it happens have the chance to turn it into opportunity.”
For Lithuanian and Baltic businesses, this mindset is particularly vital. The region’s proximity to Russia and its deep dependence on global trade make it a natural laboratory of geopolitical sensitivity. Here, an Excel table can become obsolete overnight, as currency shifts, energy prices, or sanctions rewrite business equations. “Scenario planning,” Aernoudt argues, “should be a daily management tool - not a consultant’s workshop topic.”
At its core, this is a cultural shift - from accounting logic to strategic intuition. Companies that learn to live with uncertainty will not only survive but thrive. As Professor Aernoudt likes to remind his students, “The future is not a forecast; it’s a strategic choice.”
Continue to Part IV From Unicorns to Zebras: Value-Driven Capitalism as Europe’s New Model
