Geopolitical Agility: Steering Teams Amid Global Tensions

Abstract

The way the world operates has changed dramatically due to Geopolitical Agility and how organizations can adapt quickly and effectively to changing political climates. Changes in the world have led to geopolitical uncertainty being the greatest challenge in the 2020's for global leaders. In this article we will discuss how you, as an organizational leader, need to prepare your teams for the arrival of geopolitical disruptions by being geopolitically agile. A geopolitically agile organization can be identified if it can read, internalize, and adjust its strategy quicker than its competitors based on changes in the geopolitical environment. Through research from Harvard Business Review, McKinsey & Company, the World Economic Forum, and MIT Sloan Management Review, we will demonstrate that organizations that are geopolitically agile have three main defining characteristics: their teams maintain a high level of cohesion during periods of distraction, they are able to quickly adjust their strategy when market conditions change, and they have a continued ability to innovate during periods of disruption. A four-pillar framework will be established to describe these characteristics as well as two empirical studies to provide evidence of the how/having foreign currency impact the ability of an organization to maintain agility.