The energising calm of a three-day CPO retreat by the Danish coast could so easily have been pierced by the news emerging from Washington that the US will be levying a new set of tariffs on 60 countries.
As the 24-hour news cycle whirred into action and the world entered response mode, I was reminded of the wisdom of economist Sony Kapoor, who shared his views on what he called “the great rewiring” with Procurement Leaders members at Ovation.
“The daily high-frequency obsessive monitoring of the news flow, particularly coming from the other side of the Atlantic, is so depressing that we’ve lost track of the big picture,” he told guests.
Responding to every political headline, tweet or movement will create constant, reactive fatigue. It’s easy to feel burned out or on edge when every notification brings with it a state of dread followed by the need to respond immediately.
Yet, Sony told guests at Ovation that trade duties and protectionism are accelerating a long-overdue structural shift as capital, sourcing capacity and relationships are moved or rebuilt. This, he said, is not being driven by a handful of pronouncements or social media posts, but by “millions of small decisions that are individually micro-relevant, but not macro-significant”.
This is something leaders must keep in mind as they make the decisions that Sony says lie at the heart of this change. “Your decisions are both deeply affected by this daily unpredictable policymaking and essential to preserving the basic architecture that delivered us so much prosperity… the tradeoff is that you have to make sure to separate the noise from the trend, the noise from the structural change and not get so hyper-responsive to the noise that you sacrifice longer-term opportunities,” he said.
As I wrote last week, our pre-event pulse survey results indicate that members who attended Ovation understand this and are finding ways to build resilience without sacrificing profitability. With the global trade landscape continuing to evolve at pace, CPOs must remember to remain focused on the big picture and continue the job of ensuring the function is ready to navigate this brave new world.
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