Good morning. Sir Richard Moore, who ran the U.K.’s secret intelligence service (MI6) from 2020 to 2025, has advice for CEOs trying to navigate these volatile geopolitical times. “We used to say culture eats strategy for breakfast,” he recently told me. “Well, I think you now hear people say resilience eats efficiency for breakfast. You’ve got to have that ability to pick yourself up off the floor and go again.”
Moore now advises leaders through Teneo’s Global Political Risk Advisory business and Sixth Street, a leading global investment firm. He argues that the biggest risk for companies today isn’t some black swan event that we didn’t see coming. It’s managing systemic risk from cumulative impact of known issues: the layering of COVID-19 plus Ukraine, Iran, China stress, tariffs, and more.
As soon as you go global, you’ve got to think local. Blocs no longer behave like blocs, and not just because the U.S. has uprooted traditional alliances. “People don’t line up neatly so much anymore inside a grouping,” he said. “Within the EU or ASEAN, they’re actually taking very different views on China, for example … the Philippines are in a full-on confrontation with the Chinese because of Chinese bullying over the South China Sea.” The question for leaders: “Are you now devoting the resources you need to understand where individual countries are?” Without that effort, “you won’t achieve the empathy you need to make decent investments or develop what you’re doing in those parts of the world.”
