By Henrik Madsen
2024 became a year with disruption 2.0 and controversy 3.0 being the main themes. Guess what – 2025 will be no different!
In what became the most successful year for our business, our partnership perfected how to be exceedingly distinct in our proposition, focused on what we are really good at, and accepted disruptions as a prerequisite for doing business, successfully.
We have all had to cope with the ever-changing impact of the business cycles. I believe, in 2025, these will become cyclone like. Storms will appear from everywhere, and out of nowhere. So, you could be forgiven by entering 2025 with some caution.
However, remain optimistic, yet realistic, as most successes or failures will be within your own control. While we will continue to be challenged in leading our day-to-day business operation, we must stay sharp, be distinct and focus on challenges/opportunities as they present themselves; be agile and adapt coursecorrection methods or accelerate as required. Most of all, be ruthless and deselect what you will not do.
Please do not bury your head in the sand, on matters which are out of our control. But worry only about those concerns you can control, and then work with the rest, rather than trying to resolve or combat these. If you do, you will lose battles you cannot possibly win.
Of the main 4 business disruptions/trends I see in 2025, 2 are really outside our control:
- Macroeconomics cannot easily be changed, but nor ignored, so spend time deliberating how it impacts you directly, and then decide how you adapt and make this work best for the business.
- Geo-Political changes, of which I could mention many, will make us worry, but only task your business in finding alternate solutions, to those challenges, that directly impact the business.
- Climate change is really happening, and while it is easy to consider your initiatives as immaterial in fighting the global challenge, you must persevere to make the required improvements across businesses and consider that any such investments will pay off. (Paul Polman at Unilever did it successfully, and we must replicate this success).
- Tech Innovations and Generative AI must be embraced rather than ignored. The faster we understand the capabilities of the tools, their faux and flaws, the smarter and more efficient we can become. Watch out for the opportunity to bring hyper personalization to life – it may make you more relevant that you possibly could imagine.
In my letter in January ‘24 I recommended accepting disruption as a positive. I highlighted the need for constant business assessment course-correction and re-invention. In suit of having positioned your company to build a sustainable future and made most of the opportunities that emerged in ’24; 2025 must be the year of positive, disruptive, change. And ‘real focus’ will allow you to really get in the game:
- Respond to continued disruption by reassessing where to play and how to win
- Use AI/Digital as a positive disrupter and become the agent of the disruptive change
- Empower, Engage and Reward teams in the agile culture you have created
- Efficiencies and Expansions are not enemies. If you adapt a pragmatic approach to identify, protect, expand and grow value
- Prepare for more disruption, more change, more disruption, more change…
Henrik Madsen
Henrik Madsen is Founder of HMJ International, and Member of the ACROSS Advisory Board.
