The often-frantic yearend festive season comes with another season for marketing leaders—planning and budgeting for the year ahead. We are trained to begin each year with plans firmly in place, metrics agreed, and a cadence of review meetings set.
But what if being very confident in your plan is not the best course of action?
What if over-planning could thwart actual progress?
We have an outcome in the US elections, but that does not mean we have a clear line of sight. From AI to Gen Z's changing preferences to geopolitical tensions and pesky inflation—a host of uncertainties are in front of us that can, and often do, overturn certainties and challenge our current status of working.
Uncertainty is the new certainty. And that's not a bad thing! It can be great—if we embrace it and change accordingly.
But how?
Why Predictions Fail in Uncertain Times
Setting up for success when facing uncertainty is hard because we cannot predict the future. The future consists of multiple options; a prediction attempts to simplify those many option into one, and that can blind you to unforeseen opportunities.
Predictions are also usually based on experience. In a changing environment, the past is not a good guide to the future, and therefore most predictions will be wrong.
AI and GenAI are doing a great job of convincing us we can predict, but they are a source of merely one input for informing decision-making, especially with regard to our strategy and strategic choices.
Focus on Decision-Making Over Predictions
The upshot is that the planning challenge becomes one of how to master making great decisions even though we cannot make great predictions.
The quality of decision-making is what sets apart those who lead growth from those who barely survive, so it's time to update our approaches to build in more robust decision-making.
And that means a shift away from strict planning mode.
Traditional strategic plans involve committing to an estimate of future results based on several "best estimates" of things we cannot predict, such as economic growth, customer demand, and input prices. With the caveat that those are assumptions, we put them into a plan, which projects results. We are, after all, committed to delivering the plan.
Organizations reinforce that dynamic by favoring the status quo and preferring management teams that "deliver on their promises."
Strict planning also forces us to see change as bad—a risk to be catered for rather than a groundswell of possible new opportunity. Plans ask us to review regularly and ask the question: Are we on track? Although that is a perfectly reasonable question, it assumes the plan got everything right, that there is only one track, and that no new information has become available. During uncertainty, those assumptions are usually wrong.
Key Questions to Guide Your Strategy and Planning in 2025
Plans articulate a base option, but that option is based on a series of events that are not only unpredictable but also often uncontrollable.
That's not a new view. Prussian field marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder memorably challenged the traditional approach toward strategic planning in military conflict when he stated nearly 150 years ago: "The material and moral consequences of every major battle are so far-reaching that they almost invariably create a completely different situation, a new basis for new measures. No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main body."
But just as von Moltke was not recommending his troops charge into battle without guidance, we have another option inside our organizations: In uncertainty, we cannot make perfect plans because we cannot predict what will happen... but we can prepare for what could happen.
We are not throwing all planning away: Leading is about knowing when to apply an option.
Here are five questions to ask...
1. Are You Working With Beliefs—or Data?
When there are no reliable facts, we need to make decisions based on beliefs. Doing so sounds scary, especially to companies that have invested in data-based systems and technologies.
But we are not ignoring data; we are instead acknowledging that by the time something becomes a market fact, at that point everyone knows the same thing and so the opportunity for developing strategic insight has passed.
If you want to out-grow your industry, you will at times need to make decisions based on beliefs about the emerging reality. And good beliefs are not guesses or fantasies but views about the future informed by reliable information and judgment that can be tested and changed.
2. Is the Situation Familiar—or Emerging?
Familiar situations tend to have data that can be analyzed, known variables, and a relatively clear path forward. Those types of uncertainty lend themselves to a probabilistic approach, one that combines planning—drawing on probability theory—and a variety of analytical methodologies.
But when we move to more unfamiliar ones, we are playing in environments where variables are still emerging, such as with Covid-19 or more recently AI. In such situations, we should avoid the temptation to plan.
3. Should You Pinpoint a Destination—or a Direction?
In 1850, Chicago journalist Horace Greeley urged America's young men to "Go West." He didn't specify a destination, like San Francisco or Colorado. He didn't have to. The West was the land of opportunity, and he strongly believed there were fortunes to be made—even though it wasn't exactly clear how the westward migration would play out.
His injunction was not precise, but it was accurate. It was directionally correct. Like a ship's captain, he set a good compass heading.
When the future is unclear and you're in exploratory mode, setting the right general direction is more important than setting a precise destination.
4. Are Goalposts Fixed—or Moving?
Leaders should distinguish between the times when what's needed are clear endpoints and related deliverables versus rolling milestones to achieve further learnings.
Goalposts are important in strategy, but sometimes we can only get clearer on where they should be as we move and learn. While you are exploring, acknowledge variables will emerge and you will keep learning as you go.
As conditions evolve and greater clarity emerges, tighten the goalposts you are aiming for and adjust your pace accordingly.
5. Should You be Optimizing for Efficiency—or Robustness?
In a slowdown, optimizing for extreme efficiency may be the right move. We have developed a wide array of tools to help us do so, such as just-in-time production and cost-cutting methods.
In uncertainty, being overly indexed on efficiency often hurts you. Instead, you want to optimize for robustness—still running lean but set up to capture the opportunities uncertainty can provide.
Robustness is preparing your organization to adapt to change and perform well, continuing to produce results regardless of the situation.
Preparing for Change as an Opportunity
Preparation moves from considering change as a risk to be catered for to instead see it as a new set of opportunities to grab.
Rather than ask your team to be pencils down planning, ask them to be heads up—watching and scanning the environment for new growth opportunities.
In times of uncertainty, shifting from planning to preparing helps support clearer decision-making instead of rash predictions. It involves overcoming both hubris and fear to achieve decisiveness and adaptability. It generates knowledge of what is initially unknown, and so creates learning.
And companies that learn faster, grow faster.
More Resources on Marketing Strategy, Planning, Scenarios
Testing Robustness: Is Your Foolproof Marketing Plan Really Foolproof?
The Marketing Scenario: A Reality Check on Your Marketing Strategy
Marketing Strategy Defined: What You Need to Know (and Why You Need to Know It)
How to Use Scenarios to Achieve Marketing Agility
How to Use Contingency Planning to Future-Proof Your Event Strategy
