In Conversation with Adam Fremeth: Strategic Foresight for Uncertainty

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Hosted by the Ivey Executive Education at Ivey Business School, Learning in Action explores current topics in leadership and organizations. In this podcasting series, we invite our world-class faculty and a variety of industry experts to deliver insights from the latest research in leadership, examine areas of disruption and growth, and discuss how leaders can shape their organizations for success. 

Episode Transcript:

ADAM FREMETH: The more prepared you are for running into that possibility, the more confident you could be with what that contingency could look like.

SEAN ACKLIN GRANT: Welcome to In Conversation With, where we explore the Ideas shaping leadership today. In this episode, we're bringing you a fireside chat between Bryan Benjamin, executive director of Ivey Executive Education, and Dr. Adam Fremeth, professor of business, economics and public policy at Ivey Business School.

This conversation dives deep into strategic foresight, what it means to lead when the future is anything but certain. From scenario planning to decision making under ambiguity, Adam unpacks how organizations can build resilience and anticipate what's next, even when the signals are fuzzy. Whether you joined us live or are tuning in for the first time, we'll get straight to the insights.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Disruption is everywhere. You can't look at a news feed or hear a conversation without someone talking about disruption in some shape, form, or another. So fundamentally, how is this shifting how organizations approach strategy?

ADAM FREMETH: I try not to use the term disruption anymore. It's everywhere, at all times and in many ways, I think, has shifted a lot of the attention to how you do strategy right and how you think about the big picture in ways that we've talked about for decades, but really have to put into practice, especially well right now.

We've got the issues, obviously, to the south of us and all over the world and supply chain issues, commodity pricing problems. And so all these forces are at play here. And so the way that I like to start to talk to executives and leaders about it is opening up that aperture that you have to have a much bigger view on your business than what you've had before.

And I know everyone's trying to digest as much information as they can out there, but I think it's taking down those blinders that you've got and thinking about the situation differently. It's easy to focus in on the myopia and the focus of what needs to be done on the today, but what we need to be thinking more is proactive decision making, having a bigger view of where the organization is going to go and how you can be best prepared for different potential scenarios of the world.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: I like the word proactive. I'm actually going to pick up on your comment around disruption and moving that from the vocabulary. It feels so common. It's almost like people are tuning out when they see disruption, change, uncertainty. Digging into to the planning challenges that leaders are facing, so what are some of the biggest changes and challenges that you're seeing to planning approaches and cycles these days?

ADAM FREMETH: I think a lot of what we've seen, especially over the last six months, has been we're going to allow more information to come in and wait for something to happen, sit on your hands. And that's just not an approach that's going to be successful anymore. I think we're starting to recognize that, and whenever I'm working with students and this type of strategy idea comes up, I'm like, well, what are you waiting for, right? What information is going to really change the needle for you to act?

So this is the type of conversation I bring when talking to leaders and executives as well. We need to have a position of action. When I start to consider this more deeply, it's getting beyond strategic persistence.

The strategy that had worked for you in the past, while looks great and maybe successful and had worked well in one environment, may not be the strategy that's going to work for you in the future, and being ready and comfortable and confident to move beyond what had been useful to you let's say for years ago, for what the future state is going to look like.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: So to building on that, heard lots of organizations and work with lots of organizations that have done multi-year planning and strategy with-- consider big fanfare, and often it's like, here's our new strategic plan. It's printed, and it's distributed. What happens now when six months go by and all of a sudden new information is coming at us and maybe my plan isn't as relevant as I once thought it was, even just six short months ago?

ADAM FREMETH: When I talked to leaders about strategy, it's not this ritual that you go through or a glossy document that's socialized to the organization. It's more than that. It's about living the direction of where the organization wants to go, and then putting all the pieces in place to support that.

It's something that I've seen as a really effective way to consider is that uncertainty has to be a pillar of the strategy, that there's going to be variables that are changing, and that has to be recognized up front. OK. We recognize something's going to change here, some shoe is going to be drop. Hopefully, we have an idea of what that shoe may be, but it very well could be one of these unknown unknowns in the world. And how do you future proof the organization to be able to do that?

And when I work with leaders on this, I spend a lot of time thinking about alternative hypothetical futures. What are some states of the world that could be possibilities out there.? And how does your strategy line up and what is your strategy to be successful in these hypothetical futures?

BRYAN BENJAMIN: I see a number of leaders sometimes almost freezing or inertia sets in is, I'm afraid to make a decision because maybe next week something is going to come out, and it's going to change the decision that I'm going to make. How do you encourage them to move?

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah, and I mean, this comes down to who we are as humans, right? We have this bias that's really built into us. And I'm not a psychologist, but there's a lot of people there that work on this. This bias to something that has worked well in the past, right? Well, that worked. And so if that worked, then we could maybe just tweaking this and doing that a little bit different.

And what I emphasize here is getting beyond, first off, recognizing what the biases are that we have, that this gets in the way of change and development that you would require and recognizing is step number one. And then step number two is like, OK, well if I recognize what that is then what actually could be different approaches to consider these states, right? And where our company may line up for where the world could be heading.

Let's say if it's tariffs, a world of significant protection on one side versus, you know, a world of free trade on the other side. And it's starting to consider what these levers of uncertainty that are out there that are most pertinent and relevant to our company.

If you are a firm that's operating internationally, obviously this is going to matter for you, right? If you're sourcing products from abroad, sure, this is going to impact you, but it may also impact you indirectly in ways that you hadn't even considered before, in terms of shifting the nature of competition and the benefits or even costs that your competitors face in, let's say, that one dimension of uncertainty that you could work through.

What I like about this approach is starting to come with more of a framework, right? What structured way could we think about uncertainty that allows us to be a bit more confident and comfortable with what the future may bring?

BRYAN BENJAMIN: How do you define strategy? Strategy can feel a big word, and I bet you if you asked 10 people, you probably get 10 answers. So so how do you define it?

ADAM FREMETH: Whenever I teach strategy, that's the opening question that I've got. To me strategy is all about driving performance. And performance can be defined in so many different ways depending on the organization. Are we looking at a for profit? Are we looking at a startup? Are we looking at a public organization, a government organization, social organization? And so performance is going to define really what we're talking about when we talk about strategy.

And so what it is, what are the resources and capabilities, people and assets that you bring in a unique configuration to allow you to drive performance and do so in a way that hopefully is sustainable over a long period of time, given the conversation that we had just before, how that aligns with the external environment, right?

What it is that you are doing that leads customers to want to buy from you or use your service or sign up for whatever you happen to be offering. So it's about your value proposition and capturing value and distributing value to those around you.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: At the end of the day, the external world, we're all operating in it, a lot of it I can't control, but what I can control, that's where I put my strategic lens on. And so how do I create that competitive differentiation? How do I drive performance and make my decisions accordingly? When I'm thinking about multiple scenarios and multiple what ifs, how do I do that without becoming overwhelmed? Because it's not just two or three potential scenarios, I could probably think of 30 different potential scenarios these days.

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah, and I think that's part of the issue when starting to think about foresight and building a structured way to think about the future is not being overwhelmed, right? And this is the typical how do you break down the problem into disparate parts that that's digestible. What is it that you're seeking to accomplish here, right? What is that focal issue that understanding different states of the world is going to be helpful on, right?

And there could be a number of different issues that are facing organization. Usually, there's going to be a big strategic issue that you're evaluating, and then really breaking down these different levels of uncertainty there, just like we were talking about a world of free trade versus a world of protectionism, and that there's contrasts that go between different levels between that.

And it's important then to spend time thinking about what are these sensitivities, these areas of uncertainty that are most relevant for that focal problem, right? For that focal strategic issue that you're oriented on? And so you want to come up with a list, right? You're going to spend time and come up with a series of them.

When I work with organizations, we usually have, let's say, about half a dozen, OK, that we have a common focal issue, and we come up with about a half a dozen different uncertainty levers that you want to be thinking about, because what that's going to allow you to do is start to construct different states of the world.

Ones where customers have a particular preference of one type versus another, one where policy goes one direction or another direction, and then you start to create, in each evaluation, four different states of the world that you can start to think about, right? And develop a narrative and name it and think about, OK, well, what do we have to do to be successful in this state of the world?

And this is something I would recommend organizations doing across teams within senior and middle to senior levels, so that you're doing this over and over again. You're building an understanding and a comfort level with what future states of the world could look like.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: How often do I revisit or update given the future state seems to be changing pretty frequently these days?

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah, I mean, I think this is a practice that organizations could do on a regular basis, right? I mean, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of resources, but the payoff is significant. And so maybe this is something that is scheduled in on a regular basis.

But also perhaps if you're running into a real challenge, like the one we are today on ad hoc, we're going to get people together on a Friday and sit down in a structured way, and you'll probably have someone within the organization or outside leading this and, and really thinking about, OK, well, this challenge is a really thorny one. There's a lot of those known unknowns that are out there and some things are total landmines that we didn't expect to run into, but it's building comfort around this.

I think this is the key thing, especially when developing a new strategy. I think it's extremely valuable to run these types of exercises when you're rolling out a new strategy, because what you want to do is get beyond the bias that you had for your old successful strategy, right, and develop a commitment within the organization to think about, OK, well, how ironclad not that any strategy truly is, but how strong is a strategy to these different states of the world that we have. And and then you're building support across the organization for it.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: In some ways, if my last strategy maybe wasn't successful, I'm more inclined to try something new or be a little bit more bullish, but if I'm coming off of something that has created success for years or potentially even decades, how do I adapt and keep pushing? As a leader, how do I build my strategic thinking or planning capabilities and skill sets? How do I get better at just doing this?

ADAM FREMETH: So I think one part is that every member of an organization has a hand in the strategy. The strategy is going to be developed by those at the top in building the strategy out and understanding how this fits with the environment, where things could be going. You've got mid mid-level leaders that are there for really pushing that strategy out and executing on it. And then you've got people at lower rungs of the organization that are supporting strategy. They're making the strategy happen on the ground and are aligned with the performance and the goals that have been laid out in it.

So when I talk about strategy or teach strategy, I'm really thinking about this as a concept that spans the entire organization. And when strategy is done well, no matter where you are within the organization, you recognize your part to play within that. And that's when you see these types of efforts to drive performance work really, really well. It starts to fall apart if it's, well, it's their strategy over there, and it's not my strategy.

How do you get buy-in? How do you get support for this? All different ways? It depends on past performance. It is going to be a big indicator for that. If everyone recognizes that we have to do something different, then you could get commitment.

But to my earlier point, finding ways for members of the organization to recognize how this changing environment, how the uncertainties that we have right now fit with where the organization is heading, I think that gets commitment. I think that gets buy-in. And I've seen this actually in the research that talks about organizations that undertake these types of practices and, and where you actually get the true lift from.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Learning a new skill, playing a sport, practice helps, right? And so I'm hearing you say you can give people opportunity to practice those skills. it's going to increase buy-in. It's going to increase commitment, and it becomes our strategy versus your strategy.

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ADAM FREMETH: Process is important in getting new perspectives, right, ones that perhaps people at the top of the organization may be less aware of. I think there's value in what that process involves, but strategy has to be more than the process. Because you could be constantly, every year, going back to what that strategy is and what that process is.

And leading companies out there, they lead because they've got a value proposition that hits. They know what customers want, and customers come to them time and time again because they're delivering on that value proposition. And so do you need to keep reworking a strategy to get to that?

I think it's more of this inward process of understanding of who you are and how you get to that, and what your key competitive advantage is that distinguishes you on the marketplace. And that may come from the strategy development process. Both are important, but important in very different ways.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: So I don't think we can have a conversation in 2025 without AI coming up at some point. When it comes to strategy and the question here is more around the research angle and envisioning potential scenarios or futures, how are you seeing AI factor into the strategic planning process and maybe leaders or organizations leveraging some of the tools that they've got at their disposal that we didn't have to this extent just a few years ago?

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah no, I think it's a great point. The access to information and insights at our fingertips hasn't been greater. And so something that I think can be quite important here is how does this feed into a foresight scenario planning type of process? And this is the way the lens that I've been thinking about it, on is important part of this exercise is getting the information that you need.

And using AI, in different ways, of course, the generative AI would be one way, but then also discriminate AI and other sources, can allow you to get more and more information on your customers, on perspectives, on predictions that may be out there.

I've read quite a bit on monetary policy, is something I was just teaching a couple of weeks ago, and the ability to get different insights from around the world as to where inflation could be heading and feeding into a scenario planning exercise, I could see that as being of great opportunity. It gives you an idea of, OK, well where's costs going? And well, here's an idea of a spectrum of economists or a spectrum of customers out there.

And so, that's the way that I've been thinking about it, is trying to think about how I a couple a scenario planning exercise with AI that feeds the data and information in, further build out some of these uncertainties and builds out how you think about, different states of the world that you've constructed.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: The amount of information that we have access to in the different tools that are disposal can be quite phenomenal, and really work to our advantage. How do you help leaders know when enough information is there? You can almost get lost in, and I hear people losing hours and days and weeks. It's like trying to collect more information. I'm like, actually, the information collection part needs to be done and you just need to move.

ADAM FREMETH: When you do a workshop like this, you work with leaders on this. There's same amount of time. Give you 90 minutes, you're going to work on this part, and think about this. It could be never ending. This is the challenge of the world that we're in now is, the rabbit holes are deeper and deeper, and you can really be spending too much time. And that's not the idea here. The idea is to build confidence in strategy that you have, or that you may be pursuing and considering about where things are going, and then just move on.

And so that would be a caution that I have, as you're starting to think about these hypothetical futures that could be out there.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: I like that. You put a pin in. It doesn't mean that you can't revisit it at some point later, and you're going to need to, but you got to say, OK, enough is enough. So I'm going to go back to comments you made earlier around, the buy in and the culture and the community. So, so maybe you could talk a little bit about the team side of strategy, and how leaders and organizations are fostering a team oriented approach to strategy, and one where we're hearing our strategy and feeling a collective impetus for building it, and then ultimately a collective impetus for executing on what we've built.

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah no, I think it's important point. I think something that has to be recognized is that the most valuable input to any strategy is going to be the people that you've got. OK, you're not going to be executing anything without the right set of folks in the room at all different levels that are there to develop, to execute, and to support the strategy.

And so I think that needs to be, recognized up front. And leading companies out there-- you hear this over and over again, and it's not just a poster on the wall that, people is a number one resource. It's really valuing that. Over and over again, I think part of that is aligning evaluation and training and development in such a way that going to build your people to recognize that they are the primary input into any company's strategy.

Obviously, there's going to be a socialization process that goes on when new strategies come out, or a new set of competencies are developed. But I think really allowing people to recognize their role in empowering them, in helping to drive the organization towards its goals. Yeah, I think that's key. And that's not easy, because, it goes back to the point I made at the start. It's very easy to be myopic. It's very easy to be focusing on the day to day and delivering your numbers, and making the calls that you got to make and setting up the meetings and getting out to where you need to go.

But you have to keep coming back to this wider aperture of what's going on out there and how your people are also digesting the information and thinking about where the organization is going, and where it's going within, this, what seems to be a very uncertain world today.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: How do organizations, create spacing and get their leaders comfortable recognizing the importance and the value of spending more time on strategy when it feels like they have more in the day to day, unexpected fires, real or perceived. Their days seem to be consumed with the immediate and the urgent.

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah, and I don't want to say that you need to be doing strategy work all the time. It's not like you wake up in the morning and we're just talking strategy until the end of the day. But I think it's important that, it's a lens on the decisions that are being made that you don't lose focus on where the organization is meant to be going and orienting it, towards that. It's just underlied every conversation. And I think this is where going back to foresight and thinking about, what the future could be, it gives you an idea.

Well, we're running into this issue with a particular customer, and if you're considering these different states of the world, well, maybe we're in that state now. When do you start to recognize that we've hit a scenario that we've actually considered before, and there's a reflection that has to go on that too. And so it's underlying strategy within conversations but not letting it dominate the direction of what the day to day is. It's a balance. It's a juggling act.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Well, your comment about, it can be a lens you put into a decision or a conversation actually sparked something. I think there's a number of people and myself included, to some extent, think of strategy as, OK, I'm going to take my team off site for a few days, and we're going to build strategy, then we're going to come back and then we're going to implement and execute. And obviously time and a place to do that.

But what are the decisions in the conversations I'm having on a day to day basis that are actually strategy in nature? And it's not necessarily a big formalized process. It could be a lot of the in-the-moment stuff as well, too.

ADAM FREMETH: Going back to that question you had earlier around, well how do you define strategy? We're talking about aligning resources, and people, and priorities and doing it in a thoughtful and concerted way that you're moving that whole organization in the same direction. And so that's happening all the time. I think when you start to lose that focus, that's where things start to go awry.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Are there any organizations or industries in particular? Not that I'm going to go and replicate their strategy, but they're doing something right, and I could probably learn a thing or two from what they're up to.

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah, so here's an interesting Canadian company, Maple Leaf Foods. So Maple Leaf Foods for those in our audience are unaware are spinning off their pork commodity business as its own separate entity, which right now I think is pretty interesting in the Canadian setting where, we don't a lot of companies going public on the TSX and, you have made a very concerted effort as to who they are, and who they want to be, being a world leading, sustainable focused consumer packaged goods company.

And so you have a very clear definition of who you want to be, what you think your value proposition is on the market. When you walk into a grocery store, you have an idea of what Maple Leaf Foods is, or what Schneider's hot dogs are about. And building that idea in a customer's mind, but also recognizing there's a lot of interesting external things that are going on in the environment.

At one point, we were all into non-meat plant-based alternatives, and that was hot for a very short period of time. And there's still a market for it, but not what perhaps predictions were at one point. So you start to think about, the scenario of planning exercise. OK, well think about customer preferences along this dimension here. And that's going to be, probably populating one of these levels of uncertainty that you could start to build a scenario around.

And I think the other interesting thing about Maple Leaf Foods that I've paid attention to is their growth into the United States as well, which right now, is complicated to say the least. But at the same time, they've developed capabilities on the ground in what is a very fast growing marketplace in the US. And they've succeeded at that. And so I very much like the focus that they've brought, and then they've coupled that with investments in technology.

So here I live in London, Ontario, where we're Western, and Ivey is-- and not far from here-- is a world class poultry plant that Maple Leaf has built. I think it was about $750 million completed just a couple of years ago. That allowed them to consolidate a lot of their operations. And so you're lining up with the marketing, with the operations, bringing a lot of technology into that as well to deliver on their strategy and thinking about, OK, well, could we want to be? Who do we not want to be? With a clear understanding of what different states of the world may bring.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: I really grab on to that making some decisions. This is who we are, what we feel is important because you can't be everything to everyone. And someone shared a phrase, I don't know who it was, but I'm sure it attributed it to someone prominent around. Strategy is also as much about what you don't do and choosing deliberately not to do as it is about what you do do, and making those trade offs and getting comfortable.

What about a scenario where I've gone all in, and I've doubled down, and I'm going in a direction and it's just not working? How are you helping leaders come to grips with that, especially when there's personal ownership in a strategy. Maybe I need to save a bit of face in terms of making a change.

ADAM FREMETH: Yeah I mean, I think these pivots are hard. I think it's worthwhile recognizing, when you hit that point. And sunk costs are sunk costs. And sometimes you have to think about when you cut loose and go in a different direction. But again, going back to our earlier conversation, the more prepared you are for running into that possibility, the more confident you could be with what that contingency could look like.

OK, because there's always a potential that something's going to go sideways, and that these unknown forces out there are driving you in that direction. I mean, you could see it today in so many ways, but I think building confidence around. OK, well, that didn't work out as expected, OK, and we ended up in a scenario D which was worst case. What do you do? Well, maybe you should have thought about that a little bit beforehand.

And if you spent time considering that, especially when rolling out a new strategy, the people around you are probably more confident with that next direction as well. And so I think that's part of this process. It's not just this hail mary, Well, that's where we're going. How do we do that? It's really being prepared for all these different potential situations, and the faster and faster they come.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: You hit on something around the authenticity, and even humility as a leader to say, hey, this may not be perfectly scoped out. Things may change. You're prepping individuals for recognizing that we may need to pivot. We don't want people to be going all over, but the reality is we're going to trust some things. We're going to learn. We're going to adapt as, as needed.

So I'm going to start to bring us to a bit of a close here. I'm a leader, and I want to build more strategic capabilities into my role, into, and supporting my organization. Where do I begin? Am I looking at the external environment, or am I looking at the internal environment? Any tips for how to become maybe more strategic and more deliberate in my strategic thinking and planning as a leader?

ADAM FREMETH: I think it's really about coming to this from a structured approach, and it's not walking in and throwing your hands up and thinking about what are we going to do? Or sitting on your hands and not doing anything. It's about really being analytical about the situation and considering, OK, what are those true sources of uncertainty that worry me most?

And recognizing that uncertainty is not just one side or the other side, it's a range of situations that they can face, and I find that is a really effective way to start to get buy in from your team, but also really to consider whether or not your strategy is resistant to where things could be going or what you should be thinking about doing differently as you move down that road.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Yeah, I think there's something to be said for getting stuff on the table and thinking through scenarios, even if it scares me or maybe makes me expose some potential vulnerabilities, at least I'm talking about it. At least I'm sort of exploring it. I've got a little bit more control when it's out there. Strategic foresight has been something that's long fascinated me. This ability to envision multiple scenarios, and to plan accordingly.

What excites you about this? Now more than ever, given the ability of information, given the reality that potential scenarios seem to be exponentially available for all of us at any given time?

ADAM FREMETH: I guess what excites me the most is the level of creativity and thought that we can now put to it, or the cognizance that we have to, what is a much more complicated world, and where there's forces that are out there and just an acceptance of it. Foresight and developing these scenarios, it's not a crystal ball, but I think what we need to do is to be prepared for it.

So when I work with teams on this and students with this, what excites me is actually seeing them start to recognize, OK, where they could win, and where they may have some challenges based on where they're going in the world. And that's the part that, I think we need here in Canada more than ever. We've got this window of opportunity right now, today where, we've got policymakers that are, doubling down on what should be significant growth.

And I think for business leaders and those in other sectors, to recognize, OK, well, given this, and how do we find a way to take advantage of this window of opportunity, which I think is great.

BRYAN BENJAMIN: Final question for me, is one piece of advice or something that you would recommend? Maybe a two part question, one for organizations to get better at envisioning multiple scenarios, and a piece of advice that you would give to your average leader trying to navigate in today's environment.

ADAM FREMETH: So the first is don't shy away from imagining these futures. Find the time, dedicate, that Friday afternoon or whatever it is to sit down and think about, OK, where are we most sensitive? What are these forces out there that we need to truly consider? And this isn't just sending someone off to come back with a report, and you sit down and talk about it. It's having space to deal with these issues, and to deal with them well.

And then, what leaders are supposed to do in today's environment? I think you have to go out there and identify where the opportunities are to be had. In these more challenging situations, opportunities could be great. And I truly believe that as you've run into of, market failures or other problems you go in, this is where opportunities are identified, and you just have to find some way to line yourself up for them.

And so this is a really exciting time for us at Ivey, and to be training students that are going to be going off into the world, and contributing because these are the conversations that we're having here today, and that we're really optimistic about it, where they're going to be contributing to the Canadian economy.

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SEAN ACKLIN GRANT: That's a wrap on this episode of In Conversation With. If today's insights got you think any differently about uncertainty, strategy or leadership, there's more where that came from. Explore upcoming programs and events at IveyExec.com, and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from Ivey Executive Education. Whether you're planning your next move or preparing your team for what's ahead, we're here to help you lead with clarity, even in chaos. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time.

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