Management consultants often ask their clients: “What does success look like?” As war in the Middle East approaches its third week, companies are increasingly having to consider the opposite question: “What does failure look like? And what might we need to change as a result of the conflict?”
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, corporate boards have grown used to factoring geoeconomic risk into their decision-making. Speaking in late 2023, former UK cabinet secretary Lord Mark Sedwill warned about “combination risk”, where diverse, apparently unrelated events create a perilous polycrisis.
The Iran conflict is violently combining a number of such risks, including market volatility, supply chain disruption, inflation pressure and the physical security of staff and infrastructure.