Beyond Borders: The Boardroom’s Quiet Reckoning

Originally published in AGENDA

Today’s corporate boardrooms are grappling with a crisis of strategic clarity. The comfortable certainty of globalization — built on frictionless trade, borderless markets and predictable geopolitics — has given way to a turbulent era defined by fragmented alliances, rapidly advancing technology and intense moral scrutiny.

At our recent Competent Boards Global Forum, directors and business leaders from across sectors and continents shared one critical realization: To navigate today’s complexities, board leaders must urgently rethink traditional binaries and assumptions.

There are three questions that every board should be asking:

• Have we built geopolitical foresight into our strategy and risk models?
• Are we operating under outdated global assumptions?
• Do we have the agility to respond to divergent stakeholder pressures across markets?

Make no mistake: globalization is not dead, but the rules have fundamentally changed. Sir Mark Tucker, chair of HSBC, mentioned earlier this year that globalization, as traditionally understood, has “run its course.”