Disruptions: A New Reality

Chaos is the term a lot of people use when it comes to the current geopolitical landscape. I think they are absolutely right, but only if they refer to the original Greek meaning of the word: a primordial void from which everything emerged. The real challenge is not the change itself, but the positioning based on analytics.

Author: Sven Bossu, CEO, AIPC

These are interesting times in many ways. The number of state-inflected conflicts continues to rise, technology (including AI) is becoming omnipresent, global supply chains are being disrupted and we seem to be unable to address our biggest challenge, climate change. There are still those who believe this will magically all go away and that we will return to ‘normal’ times. However, the level of disruption we are currently witnessing will simply not allow us to do so and therefore we need to face the fact that we are entering a new reality. As one of Belgium’s top diplomats, Frans van Daele, said in a recent interview: “We need to explain to people that the last 80 years of our history have been truly exceptional when it comes to peace and development.” And that exceptional period has come to an end.

For organisations worldwide, including associations, this means that they need to assess the situation and basically do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis, based on available data, and make sure that their organisation and processes in place are agile enough to change quickly in function of changing data. This is not an easy thing to do, but fortunately, there is a growing number of tools and best practices becoming publicly available allowing us to initiate the process. An example is an article published by McKinsey explaining how tariffs impact a company’s relative competitive advantage and customer demand. And while the key target audience of the article consists of corporates, the framework can be easily tweaked to be relevant for associations.
 

AIPC: "My name is Data; Lieutenant Commander Data"

The great thing about this type of tools is that they allow for strategic posture AND actions. Once again, there is not that much difference between corporations and associations. Both need to define the impact of ongoing changes at two levels: the value they offer to their customers/members in terms of services and the impact at the level of the customers/members. For example: if the core product of an association is global face-to-face education (meaning bringing participants from across the globe to one place), then that value will be impacted by an increase of travel restrictions and foreign exchange fluctuations, which might lead to a change in service offering. In the end, this might turn into something positive. Taking the same example, the travel restrictions can be avoided by opting for local or digital education, which increases the addressable market and is also more fair, as it will allow parts of the community of the association, who otherwise would not be able to do so for financial or other reasons, to participate. And on top, it is also more sustainable, as it reduces the footprint related to travel.

The example above is of course a simplification of the sometimes complex reality associations face, whereby the focus is not that much on the (economic) output, but rather on the outcome (or fulfilling the mission of the association). Nevertheless, I do believe that approaching this new reality as an opportunity is the only way forward.

To close, an example from the space of our global community of convention centres. A key risk is the disruption of food supply chains, as a result of price increases related to tariffs (such as the price of mangos imported into the US from Mexico), climate change (such as the volatility of the price of coffee beans) or other events beyond the control of convention centres. Obviously, such disruption has an impact on the venue and its customers, either financially or in terms of service delivery. One way of dealing with this is going both local and seasonal, which reduces the risk for disruption, is more sustainable and is likely to be in line with the value framework of a growing number of event organisers.

Making such choices requires data, commitment and, in some cases, courage. But they will result in a bright new future.
 

Resilience and AI-agents

Published by Meeting Media Company, the publisher of Headquarters Magazine (HQ) – a leading international publication based in Brussels, serving the global MICE industry and association community.