The first step of the shift from "industrial age" strategy to "intelligence age" strategy is to start getting comfortable with uncertainty. Something that, as a species, we're poorly wired for. We crave predictability, purpose, plans.
The uncertainty won't go away. It'll almost certainly get worse. So, what techniques can we use — in business and in life — to replace predictability with plausibility and retain a sense of purpose and the ability to plan?
The answer starts with trends. But we're not talking about the linear, backward-looking trends of old. We're talking Trends — capital T. Big, scary, sweeping, interconnected forces that are reshaping our world. I more commonly refer to them as "Societal Forces."
Let's compare:
- Small trend: huge growth in the B2B SaaS market. Societal Force: AI will likely become embedded into all of our daily lives, with agentic AI giving us all the power of bespoke SaaS designers.
- Small trend: investment opportunities in niche circular / no-waste businesses. Societal Force: circularity is the necessary foundation of a long-term economy.
- Small trend: we're becoming less happy. Societal Force: that's very unlikely to improve, likely leading to a "make or break" moment.
The four forces worth your attention
In business strategy, my favourite resource for stretching thinking on technology Trends is the Future Today Strategy Group's annual Tech Trends Report. But although every company is now a tech company, it's not actually all about tech, digital, and AI. Nor is there significant value in trotting out our old 90s pal, PESTEL. At best it gives us trends (small t); at worst we drown in endless lists.
Instead, there are four Societal Forces I keep coming back to:
1️⃣ AI — we are surpassing the digital age into the intelligence age.
2️⃣ Planetary boundaries — we're overspending our planet's budget.
3️⃣ Ageing demographics — ageing populations, globally.
4️⃣ Deglobalisation — the fracturing of the post-WWII world order.
There's no shortcut to understanding these forces. You need to be a curious, impartial, deeply thoughtful, and voracious consumer of information.
But if you spend some time thinking about how they might shape your life and industry, you'll be well set for engaging with uncertainty and exploring different plausible future scenarios.
What is the difference between a trend and a Societal Force?
A trend is typically narrow, sector-specific, and observed by looking backward at recent data. A Societal Force is a macro-level shift — usually operating over decades rather than quarters — that reshapes the conditions within which all trends occur. AI, demographic inversion, planetary boundaries, and deglobalisation are Societal Forces: they affect every sector, interact with each other, and cannot be meaningfully addressed by a single business acting alone.
How should a business use Societal Forces in its strategy process?
The goal is not to predict exactly how these forces will play out but to understand how they might interact and what futures they make plausible. The practical tool is scenario planning: build several plausible combinations of how these forces could evolve over 10–20 years, then test your strategic hypotheses against each one. The strategies that hold up across multiple scenarios are your most robust bets.
