As we close out 2025 and look toward the year ahead, one thing is certain: 2026 will be full of uncertainty. Business forecasts point to a dynamic operating environment driven by technological acceleration and disruption, geopolitical tensions and supply chain risks, tariff tantrums, economic and financial ambiguity, and evolving consumer expectations. All of this raises a fundamental question for business leaders: How can we develop the agility required to maintain a competitive advantage in the face of such rapidly changing complexity and uncertainty?

Why agility matters

When environments shift quickly, organizations that cling to rigid plans or narrow operating models are caught flat‑footed. Agility isn’t a buzzword – it is the capacity to pivot, adapt, reorganize, and respond in real time to unseen or evolving threats and opportunities. In a VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity), agility becomes a core leadership capability.

Lessons from three leaders

Let’s pause to consider how different successful leaders have viewed uncertainty:

• Yogi Berra (yes, the baseball catcher turned philosopher) quipped: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” and “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
• Apple technology visionary, Alan Kay, said: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower often said: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

Berra’s wry humor reminds us that the future is unknowable. Kay’s perspective reminds us that we can shape the future rather than being buffeted by it. Eisenhower’s military‑informed insight reminds us that no fixed blueprint will survive first contact with reality. However, the process of collaborative planning creates shared understanding that enables your team to respond to dynamic scenarios with agility.

Introducing the Collaborative Planning Process

Drawing on these lessons, an approach to develop agility that I’ve used with leadership teams across industries is the Collaborative Planning Process. It is rooted in the military decision‑making process (designed for VUCA environments) and adapted to a corporate leadership context.

Here’s a breakdown of how this can work:

Step 1: Leader’s Guidance

As the team’s leader, your first job is to set the mission in clear terms. Define what needs to be done (task), why it matters (purpose), and what success looks like (end‑state).

Example: Suppose your team has been focused on delivering a service in a specific business sector, and now senior leadership sees that the sector is ripe for disruption. You convene the team and provide the following guidance:

Background: “Team, the strategy review shows we may be over‑concentrated in our sector. That risk could force us to downsize if disruption hits. I need your help.”

Mission (task and purpose): “We need to diversify our services into other areas in order to manage the risk of a potential disruption in our sector.”

End‑state: “Within 12 months we’ll be serving a portfolio of different sectors with the same commitment to excellence, and we’ll be positioned for sustained growth even if one sector falters.”

Once your guidance is clearly understood by your team, you form a “Collaborative Planning Team” (CPT)  by selecting a subset of functional experts best suited to tackle the mission. You empower them to figure out “how” to achieve your desired end-state, emphasizing three critical behaviors:

1. Collect relevant data and facts
2. Encourage rigorous debate
3. Stay attuned to the strategic context

Step 2: Mission Analysis

The CPT begins by analyzing all factors that can affect the mission using the acrostic C‑R‑A‑F‑T to frame the analysis:

• Competition (what are rivals doing?)
• Resources (what do we have, what do we need?)
• Atmospherics (political, cultural, economic, technological, regulatory dynamics)
• Functions/additional expertise (what functional support is needed?)
• Time factors (deadlines, windows of opportunity)

Too often teams rush to solutions without fully understanding the situational context. As Berra once said: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” Careful mission analysis helps avoid that misstep.

Step 3: Course of Action (COA) Development

Next, the team develops three feasible and distinguishable courses of action. “Feasible” means realistically executable; “distinguishable” means meaningfully different from one another.
For each COA, the team lays out:

• The concept of operation (overall approach)
• Discrete steps (“who does what when”)
• Task‑organized team structure required for execution

Developing three separate COAs forces creativity and breadth of thinking.

Step 4: Contingency Planning

Because no plan survives first contact, this phase asks: “What could go wrong?” (risks) and “What could go unexpectedly well?” (opportunities) for each COA. The CPT clusters responses, assesses probability versus impact, and develops contingency plans for high‑probability/high‑impact scenarios.

Each contingency plan answers:

1. “How will we know this issue is developing?” (what indicators/metrics)
2. “What will we do about it?” (pre‑determined response steps)

At this point, the CPT briefs you on their mission analysis, COAs, and contingencies.

Step 5: Decision Filters

You review each COA, assess pros and cons, and make the decision. This is where your leadership judgment comes to the forefront.  Here are four practical decision filters to help you hone in on your decision:

• Filter #1: Ask probing questions of the CPT until you are confident you have clear, integrated answers.
• Filter #2: Ask yourself: Will the decision accomplish our mission? Will it take care of our people? Will it uphold our organizational values?
• Filter #3: When multiple options all pass #2, trust your instinct (your “gut”). The research of Nobel Prize-winning author Daniel Kahneman confirms the power of intuition alongside logic.
• Filter #4: “Trust, but verify,” as President Ronald Reagan famously said. Use logic and a checklist to validate your decision. Here’s a useful checklist:

1. 1. Is an immediate decision required?
   2. Have you considered the strategic context and constraints?
   3. Did you have the right people with the right expertise in the room?
   4. Did you frame the issue accurately and encourage debate?
   5. Did you collect all relevant facts?
   6. Did you identify and weigh the risks and opportunities?
   7. Do you feel sufficient conviction to be decisive and explain why you chose it?

Sometimes the best decision is a hybrid, combining elements of two COAs into a new path forward. Once you decide, explain your rationale to your team and empower them to execute the plan.

Step 6: Execution

With the plan chosen, the CPT often becomes a core part of the execution team. Key considerations for executing the plan include:

• Ensure each execution‑team member knows their role and is empowered to adjust in real time.
• Communication must be clear, consistent, and decentralized so that adjustments don’t require top‑down sign‑off in the middle of chaos.
• Role clarity is essential; weak role definition is one of the most common causes of mission failure.

Step 7: Debrief

After execution (and optionally at regular intervals during execution) you hold a debrief, focusing on continuous improvement by asking: what happened, why did it happen, and how can we improve next time? Avoid focusing on “who failed.” As the leader, start by acknowledging your own mistakes, and be sure to capture lessons learned and codify improvements in process and performance.

Why this process builds agility

• It builds a shared operating baseline across the team so you all understand the mission, environment, roles, and contingencies.
• It embeds scenario thinking and contingencies, so when change hits you’re not starting from zero.
• It accelerates decision‑making because you’ve pre‑thought through options and analytics.
• It creates role clarity and decentralized execution, enabling real‑time adjustments rather than rigid adherence to the initial plan.
• It embeds a culture of continuous improvement, so you learn and adapt after each execution cycle.

Final thoughts for business leaders on agility

In a world where disruptions are becoming more frequent with greater magnitude and higher velocity, the leadership imperative is clear: build organizational agility. Rather than resisting uncertainty, incorporate it into your operating rhythm through structured, collaborative planning and execution.

Remember: you may not be planning a wartime invasion like Eisenhower, but his insight still holds – the future will always surprise you, competition and chance will challenge your plan, and only those who prepare, adapt and execute with agility will gain and hold a competitive advantage.

Invest in the process, not just the plan. Empower your teams, define the mission clearly, analyze deeply, generate options, prepare contingencies, decide with judgment and conviction, execute with clarity and agility, and debrief for continuous improvement. That’s how business leaders build resilient, agile, high‑performing teams capable of thriving in a dynamic, uncertain world.

For more insight into how to lead your team through uncertainty and change, see chapter 8 in my book, The Substance of Leadership. And if you need help developing a strategy to navigate through the uncertainty ahead, let’s connect!

Sources

United States Army: Field Manual 101-5 – Staff Organization and Operations

Daniel Kahneman: Thinking, Fast and Slow