Beyond the risk register: Why future-ready leadership demands strategic discomfort

The year is 2029, and vertical farming has become a symbol of national resilience in the Middle East. Governments have poured billions into hydroponic megafarms. Food security indices have climbed and export deals rolled in.

The region has also been hailed globally as a pioneer of agricultural innovation – a place where technology had triumphed over land scarcity and climate stress.

And then it all collapses.

A fungal microbe, exploiting the genetic uniformity of hydroponic crops, mutated in a single facility, sweeps through the region’s interconnected systems.

Within six weeks, 40 per cent of regional crop output is lost. Emergency imports are then scrambled at record costs. What seemed like a shining example of resilience is exposed as dangerously brittle.

The risk was known. The signals were there – just not heard, or not heeded.

This isn’t a possible “future” story about agriculture. It spotlights leadership under complexity. From pandemic blindspots to supply chain fragilities and climate volatility to AI backlash, organisations across every sector continue to be surprised by visible and often documented disruptions that were ultimately sidelined.

Known, but ignored

Why does this keep happening?

Not because the risks are invisible but because they’re inconvenient, ambiguous, or don’t fit the dominant narrative. In environments that reward momentum and performance, there is often little appetite for the slow work of horizon scanning or scenario stress-testing – especially when things appear to be going well.

Risks that are uncomfortable or unfamiliar are easily dismissed as fringe. And when success stories dominate, dissenting signals – especially weak ones – struggle to break through.

The vertical farming collapse followed this exact pattern. Early warnings were buried in obscure journals, dismissed as edge-case thinking. There was no lack of intelligence. But attention was highly selective.

The illusion of the list

Many organisations believe that because a risk appears on a register, it is being managed. But listing a risk and engaging with it are two very different things.

Take the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report. Each year, it publishes a heat map identifying the most severe and likely risks facing the world over the next decade. Climate volatility. Biodiversity loss. Emerging infectious diseases. Cybercrime. Water crises. Year after year, these threats are mapped, flagged, and even color-coded – often with “blobs” so large they’re impossible to miss.

And yet the most common organisational response is to file these risks under “context”, rather than integrate them into core planning. They are acknowledged, but rarely rehearsed.

The problem isn’t the heat map. The problem is what happens after. The mere appearance of a threat on a list can create a false sense of preparedness – a box ticked, a risk “covered”.

Risk registers often serve as a checklist – useful for reporting, but misleading when it comes to real readiness. Rarely do leadership teams ask: What would we actually do if this happened tomorrow?

And most registers fail to consider how risks interact. A CEO scandal, shifting consumer ethics, a tech system failure, and policy fragmentation – individually manageable, perhaps. Together? Catastrophic.

Strategic foresight starts where the risk register ends – not with what’s on the list but with how those risks might collide.

From risk registers to risk realism

So, what does it take to build a future-ready organisation in a time of converging disruption?

We propose three shifts:

1. Expand peripheral vision: Build structured capacity to detect early signals from the margins – in scientific literature, startup ecosystems, citizen movements, and niche media. Weak signals are often the earliest indicators of system shifts. Unless you design for it, they won’t rise through the usual filters.
2. Institutionalise strategic discomfort: Challenge internal optimism regularly. Build in moments to stress-test assumptions and rehearse disruption. Reward people who challenge prevailing wisdom, not just those who confirm it.
3. Map risk interdependencies: Move beyond lists. Use systems thinking to explore how risks could combine. Model chain reactions and secondary effects. Ask not just “What could go wrong?”, but “What could go wrong together?”

Future-readiness is a cultural trait

Foresight isn’t about crystal balls or radical prediction. It’s about readiness for uncertainty – and a willingness to engage the uncomfortable.

The most resilient organisations aren’t those that see the future clearly but those that build the muscles to adapt to futures they can’t fully see. That begins with humility, curiosity, and the courage to ask: What might we be missing?

This demands a cultural shift. One that values critical inquiry over certainty. Signals over noise. And reflection over reaction.

In the aftermath of every high-profile shock – from pandemics to tech crashes – leaders demand tighter regulation, faster protocols, and better reporting. But those alone won’t build adaptive capacity.

Because in every one of these cases, there were warnings. The failure was not one of ignorance – but of attention. Foresight failed because it asked the system to be uncomfortable – and the system declined.

Three questions every board should be asking

1. Which of our success stories might be blinding us to emerging fragilities?
2. What signals are we currently incentivised to ignore?
3. If three of our “low-impact” risks hit at once – what would break first?

If your strategy doesn’t create space for doubt, it’s not a strategy – it’s a narrative. If your risk register doesn’t provoke discomfort, it’s incomplete.

And if your future looks smooth and linear, it’s probably fiction.

Doris Viljoen is the director of the Institute for Futures Research at Stellenbosch Business School and Nic Labuschagne is the head of Strategy and Crisis Management, APCO MENA.

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