Strategic shock resilience: Anticipate earlier, perform better

Covid-19 reverberated through labor markets, logistics networks, financial systems, regulatory frameworks, and consumer demand. This made it painfully clear that the interconnectedness built up over decades had also become a mechanism for the propagation of systemic shocks.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine transformed energy dependencies into strategic vulnerabilities overnight: supply chains had to be reorganized under pressure, and sanctions redrew trade routes. And recently, the conflict in the Middle East has once again put organizations to the test. The Strait of Hormuz, twenty-one miles wide at its narrowest point, handles approximately twenty percent of the global oil supply and twenty-five percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG)⁽¹⁾. Since hostilities escalated in late February 2026, the passage has effectively been closed. Hundreds of tankers are at a standstill. Within days, the price of oil rose above hundred dollars per barrel. European gas prices climbed by more than forty percent.
Premiums for war risk insurance shot up sharply. Seventy to eighty percent of ships now reroute via the Cape of Good Hope, adding ten to fourteen days of extra transit time per voyage⁽²⁾. The ripple effects on energy costs, commodity prices, fertilizer supply, logistics networks, and capital markets continue to mount.
These are symptoms of a structural transition, where the intersection of geopolitical, economic, technological, and ecological forces makes strategic shocks more frequent, more interconnected, and harder to absorb. At the same time, it is precisely these disruptive forces that create unevenly distributed opportunities. The organizations that will perform better are those that anticipate sooner, understand the consequences more deeply, and act while others are still reacting.

Anticipating shocks
Strategic shocks are not predictable, but they can be anticipated. They feel like surprises because most organizations do not systematically look for them. Shocks do not arise out of nowhere, they are the result of a single trend reaching a tipping point, two forces crossing each other in a disruptive manner, or multiple dynamics converging and causing a rupture that reorders the competitive landscape. And while not to be predicted with certainty, can be identified, structured, and prioritized well in advance.
This discipline begins with creating a thorough, organization-specific overview of plausible shocks. Not a generic global risk list, but a prioritized list anchored in the factual business model, geographic presence, supply chain dependencies, and competitive position. This allows organizations to see how markets might change before it happens, anticipate disruption among competitors in both supply and demand, and position themselves in anticipation of tipping points rather than merely reacting to them.
Next: understand how shocks propagate. A shock is a trigger. Every major shock moves through recognizable global systems: trade and transport networks, monetary and financial systems, policy and governance frameworks, energy infrastructure, digital systems, labor markets, the social and information environment, the environmental and climate system, and the geopolitical architecture that supports international stability. These are the concrete channels through which the direct consequences of a shock – the so-called first order effects – grow into broader, less obvious consequences: the second- and third-order effects. The immediate impact of a shock is rarely the most significant. Germany realized this too late regarding its dependence on Russian gas. In 2021, approximately fifty-five percent of Germany’s gas came from Russia, with a deeply entrenched infrastructure dependency and no LNG import capacity to enable rapid diversification⁽³⁾. When supplies were restricted, the government launched a 200-billion-euros stabilization package⁽⁴⁾, the country lost industrial capacity, and its geopolitical maneuvering room proved limited at the very moment it was needed most. In 200 days, engineers managed to build a floating LNG terminal⁽⁵⁾, yet, an achievement that should not have been necessitated by a crisis.
The contrast with Toyota is instructive. Prior to the global chip shortage of 2021, Toyota had identified vulnerabilities in its multi-layered supply chain and built up strategic stockpiles of critical components. When competitors had to halt production, Toyota managed to maintain production levels and gain market share⁽⁶⁾. The shock was the same for everyone. The insight into how it would propagate, and the preparation that followed, was not.

From exposure to benefit
Second-order effects do not merely create risk. They redistribute value across sectors and regions. Those who see them coming can act before they become fully visible to others. The crucial step is to assess how second-order effects intersect with the company’s specific vulnerabilities: in markets and revenue, in the supply chain and operations, in financial position, in legal and regulatory position, and in the workforce.
Supply chains deserve special focus in this regard. Most organizations have a reasonable understanding of their direct suppliers. Far fewer organizations have a true understanding of dependencies in the second and third tiers of their supplier network (Tier 2 and Tier 3), precisely where the majority of system disruptions actually originate: in geographic concentrations, raw materials or components sourced from a single supplier, and logistical bottlenecks that only become apparent when they fail. Building that visibility before a shock occurs enables faster repositioning and increases the ability to secure favorable supply contracts while less well-prepared competitors are still diagnosing their exposure. In the current conflict in the Middle East, organizations that had already mapped out their dependencies in the Gulf Corridor are weathering the shock from a relatively strong position. Organizations that had not done so are making reactive decisions under pressure, at higher costs.
A thorough analysis of exposure reveals two categories of measures. The first is shock-specific: targeted measures that reduce exposure to the most severe and likely disruptions, combined with contingency plans that can be activated immediately once a shock occurs. The second is systemic: structural investments in resilience that deliver value regardless of which specific disruption arises next. It is precisely the identification of patterns across multiple shocks – the common vulnerabilities and shared capacity needs that recur in multiple scenarios – that makes preparedness at the enterprise-level truly sustainable.

Acting quickly and decisively
Organizations that have done this work make decisions faster because they have already thought through scenarios. They act while competitors are still trying to understand what has happened. A seven-year study showed that companies that had embedded systematic foresight into their decision-making were thirty-three percent more profitable and achieved three times the growth in market capitalization compared to similar companies that did not ⁽⁷⁾.
Shock resilience is not a periodic risk exercise or compliance task, but a systematic ability to anticipate, understand, and act. Resilience is necessary, but not sufficient. Those who only react when a shock is fully visible are already too late. The real gain lies in the ability to recognize disruptions early – and then act quickly and decisively, while competitors are still searching for answers. The same forces that amplify disorder also create the opportunities and competitive openings that reward those who are prepared. Organizations that master this will not rule out shocks, but they will be the ones that maintain, and strengthen, their position at the forefront after every shock.

Sources

(1) U.S. Energy Information Administration: The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint
(2) Kearney Foresight: Conflict in the Middle East: When Volatility Becomes Structural, maart 2026: op aanvraag beschikbaar via Kearney Foresight
(3) Clean Energy Wire: Gas in Germany’s energy transition
(4) Duitse federale overheid: Economic stabilisation package
(5) Clean Energy Wire: Germany inaugurates first LNG terminal in Wilhelmshaven
(6) Harvard Business Review: How Toyota Navigated the Global Chip Shortage
(7) Rohrbeck e.a.: Corporate Foresight and its Impact on Company Performance, Futures, Elsevier, longitudinale studie 2008–2015