The Macro Memo - The Macro Memo: Trade Wars & Business Strategy: Planning Through Uncertainty

In this special edition of The Macro Memo, we examine the seismic shifts in global trade policy following dramatic US tariff announcements. With duties briefly imposed on over 90 countries—before being swiftly revised to a flat 10% and a steep 145% on China—boards and executive teams now face extraordinary volatility in trade conditions and economic indicators.

Host Gavin Hinks is joined by economist George Lagarias and business strategist Mark Kennedy to dissect what this all means for business leaders. The episode explores how tariffs impact inflation, supply chains, business modeling, and investor sentiment, and why managing uncertainty must now be a core leadership skill. From stock market turbulence to Treasury yield dislocations, our experts assess both the risks and the surprising opportunities that lie ahead.

We also look at how corporate leaders should think about resilience—balancing cost control with agility, resourcefulness, and long-term strategic positioning. As firms pause investment decisions and rethink market exposure, the episode offers a clear-headed guide to scenario planning, talent retention, and the potential realignment of global trade. 

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to this special edition of the Macro Memo Podcast.

Global trade is in turmoil following the latest announcements from the White House that imposed Liberation Day tariffs on ninety countries around the world, including some inhabited only by penguins.

The announcement sent shock waves through the global economy as both governments and companies adjusted to a brutal realignment of trading norms. The story wasn't over there. Within days, the White House had retreated to a blanket ten percent tariff, a hundred and forty five percent on China, following a stock market route and rising yields on treasury bills. So how do businesses cope with the president's on again, off again tariff policies? How do they even begin to address their business goals amid so much uncertainty?

With me are our Macro Memo regulars to run the numbers and options in this new era. Economist George Legarius is in London. Hello, George. Thanks for joining us.

Hi, Gavin.

And from Dublin, at least for this program, business expert Mark Kennedy. Hello, Mark.

Hi, Gavin.

Look, guys, there's much to talk about, around the tariffs, but let's begin with some basics, George, if we can. How do tariffs work? Set the scene for us.

So, just to avoid confusion, it is a tax on importers.

If you want to import something that has a tariff on it, say an iPhone, for example, and that iPhone comes from China, if there is a ten percent tax on it, then an iPhone costing fifteen hundred, it would cost sixteen fifty. If there is a hundred percent, tariff on it, then it will cost three thousand and so on and so forth.

So it is a simple tax on importers, domestic importers.

So that's quite brutal. Does that just to give us an idea, does that usually, involve prices rising or do, exporters just sort of draw a halt to their, business?

So this is where it gets slightly more complicated. In theory, it is inflationary just because prices rise and especially if you put tires on a lot of goods or in a lot of countries, then all other things being equal, you should see inflationary pressures build up. However, if inflationary pressures build up, you may also see, a drop in in real demand.

Okay. I will not buy the iPhone if it costs three thousand. So you could see a drop in demand, and such drops in demand are deflationary.

Okay. So the theory goes that inflation, from tariffs again, you asked about the theory. Inflation from tariffs, the theory says, is transitory.

Okay. It's a one off essentially. And then when we count deflation the next year, it should be off plus.

It could drop, more if you see a real hit to to growth.

Right.

Thanks for that, George. Mark, just coming to you on on this subject, setting the scene for us.

Chapter

Tariffs and Business Modeling

What role do tariffs play in business modeling if you're an export an exporter? You know, before all this debacle that we're going through at the moment, What what role do tariffs play in working out what you're going to do with your business development?

George has explained the mechanism. It's, you know, it's relatively simple. And I think in the normal course, we've had a very, very long period of pretty stable trade relations and and the tariff regime, you know, and various WTO agreements and things. So people knew the landscape they were working in. So I think that this the the impact of of what we've seen in the last few days, you know, clearly, this for most importers is an increase in cost and sales, potentially. And let let's let's put potentially in front of everything here because there's a lot moving even as we're speaking.

And so you're into thinking about, okay. Can I pass that cost on to customers?

If I can't, what what does that do to my margins? What does it do to my profitability?

And, ultimately, in the kind of extreme scenarios, you're looking at what does it do to your business model, certainly impacts things like investment decisions. And you get into then what is the impact of a of a particular policy position by different governments over time, and does that lead potentially as we've seen historically?

You know, high tariffs tend to lead to recessionary kind of forces. And what does that do to businesses becomes the question. So but there's a there's a as we sit here at the end of this week, because of the events, there's potential in front of that, and there's a lot happening between countries at the moment, so we're not sure where that's going. And I suppose that brings me to the two other things that events like this mean for businesses. One is it creates a sense of uncertainty.

And as we've often said actually on these podcasts, managing uncertainty is very difficult, and it it's a it's a discipline in itself almost. So for business leaders, that's certainly on the agenda at the moment. And there's a kind of psychological impact to this as well, which in in extremely stressful or potentially stressful scenarios, it gets harder to manage organizations because you've all you gotta manage yourself as a business leader, but you gotta manage all of your people and your suppliers and your customers. And, you know, that is something I think that people are beginning to to get their heads around at the moment as well.

So tariffs feed into a kind of stability that exporters require if they're gonna to effectively plan what how they're gonna build their business and manage their staff.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So as a stable regime, people can work for and you get the kind of impacts that that George mentioned, you know, where it isn't leading to multiyear inflation, and it's kind of understood.

But once you start to move things around, then you get into this uncertainty that we have at the moment. And then we're we're hearing from a lot of clients as they're starting to look ahead to the rest of the year. We're certainly hearing businesses saying they're not sure they proceed with some investments. And they're waiting to see what happens over the next ninety days really before they're either saying yes or no to some things they might have added on their agenda.

Chapter

Market Reactions to Tariff Changes

Well, let's come back to that in a moment. What I did wanna do is turn to George, to give us an idea of what the impact has been on markets so far from the so called Liberation Day tariff changes. Of course, we've seen some form of rollback since that, but give us an idea of what was happening in on the markets, George.

George, I think you're muted.

So we have to remember that markets are moving a lot faster than the economy. They tend to predict outcomes. Markets may be leveraged.

And, you know, if we're being slightly facetious about it, markets act like like the manic depressive cousin of of the economy.

So if something happens in the real economy, markets will tend to overreact either way. Okay? So keep this in mind. Because what's happened is, some very big moves, in minus five, minus seven percent per day in, in the US markets, followed more or less by by European markets.

Then, about a week after Liberation Day, mister Trump said that, he would impose, less, tariffs. He would post some tariffs for ninety days and impose a ten percent minimum tariff on on most countries. That led the market to a ten percent, rebound within the day.

We are seeing movements on the upside and on the downside.

Personally, I didn't even see them during the global financial crisis, but there's a good reason for that. And the reason is that this time around, we have a lot more algorithmic trading.

So what back then in two thousand eight might have been a minus five percent, very quickly becomes a a minus ten percent.

I think, just a few days ago, we saw the market going from a minus three percent to a plus five percent in less than twenty minutes.

Many financial markets for twenty years have never seen a reversal. And twenty minutes, I think, is long. Maybe it happened like five minutes.

I just took my eye off the Bloomberg for five minutes, and and I saw the market soaring. So this is not the the result of leverage. This is more the result of algorithmic trading. So the answer to to your question, Gavin, is that we are seeing from equities a lot of volatility. In terms of bonds, we are seeing, some dislocations because we see the yield on, the US, treasury, going up and the dollar going down.

These two things should not move in opposite directions. And if they do move in opposite directions, then you want them to move, the the other way. You'd want the the dollar to go up and the treasury to go down.

What is happening is that we assume, that either hedge funds or some, bigger players may be selling, US debt wholesale.

And the impact of that is?

Well, the impact of this is a lot of wire in the market. It is a dislocation. There is some speculation that, the the White House paused, the some of the tariffs after they saw this particular dislocation in the market, because it does signal a worry as to, those two assets. You see, the dollar and the ten year treasury are not simple assets.

The ten year treasury is the bedrock of every portfolio of the world, and the dollar is a global reserve currency. Yeah. Okay. So these are very important assets.

If they move like that, it is more genuine cause for concern much more than equities, especially when those equities are driven by by algorithms. So I know equities get all the headlines, but, actually, it's a treasure in the dollar that are reported right now.

And presumably, there's a lot of there's a big stock of bonds out there that could be sold wholesale if the tariff will continue.

Everybody has a has a stock of of treasuries precisely because it's your safe asset. That that's the asset you will tend to stock anyway. You know, you would not tend to stop Greek debt. That would be your speculative asset. But your safe asset is the one that you have a large inventory of.

And, George, just to complete this picture, can you give us an idea of what has happened or may happen to inflation and interest rates at this point?

Chapter

Inflation and Interest Rate Predictions

So for the time being, consensus is that, in the US, we're going to see some inflationary pressures going forward.

Whether they're going to be short lived or not, is is a big question mark. No one knows this. And the speculation also is the consensus is, in Europe that we will see deflation.

And that goes back to a very old show, we did with Mark Kennedy, who told me that two years ago, the problem was Chinese reducing the prices to to increase exports in in, in Europe. So this is going to happen again now on steroids. If you block them from their major market, you know, which is the US, then they still need to stop, which means they're going to come to Europe, the other big consumption market. They're going to to to do it at even lower prices.

So for Europe, there are deflationary forces and the UK for that matter. For the US, there are inflationary forces. And across the board, we see, I wouldn't say recessionary, but, forces towards lower growth. It may become recessionary in Europe because growth was meager anyway around one percent. So it's not too difficult to slip to recession, from that point. In the US where growth is three percent, it is it is, it is a big slide towards recession.

Okay. Having said that, JPMorgan did give a sixty percent probability of recession this year.

Okay, Mark. There's a lot of indicators there that George has talked about. What what what are business leaders going to be looking at?

Chapter

Business Strategies in Uncertain Times

So I think, there's two things that they there there's a kind of playbook that people will look at immediately, which, is the kind of stuff that one looks at when you're in an uncertain environment. And it's a it's a bunch of old adages in a way. Cash is king. So you try and conserve cash. You try and make sure you're you're liquid.

You try and make sure you have alternative funding mechanisms in place. You think about your planning cycle and make it shorter rather than longer, which goes back to the point I made about investment decisions a moment ago.

You definitely try and keep your teams and assets in good shape, the ones that you need. And I think people will start to plan for scenarios where, you know, ranging from a recession, hopefully, that doesn't happen, but what does the business do to to survive through that to more positive outcomes and and then start to to plan on that way? So I think that most businesses start into that and start thinking about things like managing costs as well, that trying to make the business as fit as possible.

Probably, there's a favorite word that George and I both have, which is that in in any time, you should be managing your business towards resilience. And I think a lot of businesses will start thinking about how resilient they are in the face of a number of scenarios. And there's there's different ways you can do that, but that's probably gonna come on agendas and then quickly as well.

Let's come back to those issues. I just want to drill down into whether business leaders should be watching those indicators closely and how seriously they should be taking them for their own prospects.

I I think most business leaders will watch them anyway, and we'll be watching kind of that progress and trying to use the wisdom of people like George to say, okay. But what's gonna happen three months, six months, one year down the road?

But in reality, a lot of businesses will also react to their immediate stimulus. So as George said, there is a scenario here where you'll see demand fall in certain sectors. And I think they'd be watching that day by day to make sure that if it's coming, they see it coming and and they're managing that impact too. So it's very, very practical. And, you know, most businesses, even the most simple, have a dashboard of three or four things that they're watching constantly. I think that's where a lot of their focus would be as well as the longer term indicators.

Right. So I I think, for many people looking at the volatility that we've witnessed in recent days over the last week and, of course, the constant talk of tariffs since the beginning of January, I think there there might be a kind of view building that, oh, we just wait and see. We wait until it all settles down. But it strikes me that that's not a particularly effective strategy to, employ in running a business right now.

Mark, if I can come to you first.

It's a it's something that one needs to be careful of.

And and I think if we want to lessen in jumping to the wrong conclusions, you can look to COVID where businesses did start to take actions where they anticipated the market wasn't going to be great. And that did happen in some sectors. In other sectors, it didn't happen. And in fact, we went through the same cycle in a in a different way when COVID restrictions started to be lift lifted in many countries where businesses were expecting, oh, no government if there was government support, that'll disappear, and we're gonna have a a period where things are gonna become very difficult. Again, in many sectors, it didn't happen. So you you wanna be careful of the overreaction.

But I as I said, I think there's a playbook that in times of great uncertainty, and that's where we feel we are at the moment, people will look to strengthening their balance sheet, making sure that they have plenty of liquidity, making sure that they're managing their teams well and not having too many people, but also making sure critical resources and critical team are in place so that you continue to serve your customers well. Because at the end of the day, staying in business, generating profit, that that's the way out of any uncertainty. So and and people will be, I think, in an look. We're already hearing it, as I said a moment ago. Some investment decisions are being paused, and that is not inconsequential, but it's not that surprising as well.

Chapter

International Business Responses

George, do you get a sense of how, international business is responding?

So as, Mark very well put it, businesses, first of all, respond to their immediate stimulus.

So Apple, for example, charted six planes from, India, to transfer iPhones to, to the US right before the tariffs began or as around the time they began, to avoid significantly around one and a half million iPhones, six planes, to make sure that they're going to be able to give their, clients the iPhones at fifty hundred, dollars and not three thousand dollars.

So, you know, they respond to to immediate stimulus.

What I was going to say listening to Mark is this. In our c suite barometer, which is a great publication that comes out, once every year, a survey of of c of c suite, individuals, they identified three key themes. They identified, AI. They identified exploring new territories, and they identified, employee, retention, and talent, acquisition.

So they identified these key three themes.

I think it would be extremely wrong to mistaken, being resilient for being static.

Being resilient means that you have to do two things. You have to button down the hatches, go around the boat, make sure, you know, none of the water gets in, and make sure your organization is tight. And as Mark said, you need to make sure that your employees, especially your key employees, are relatively comfortable. Okay?

Because things are about to get rocky. On the other hand, you have to still consider the benefits of AI. You still have to scar for talent because you might lose some of your key people anyway. And you still have to consider the benefits of AI because they might give you answers in this environment, which you did not have before.

And when it comes to strategic new territories, it might sound crazy to say, okay. But you will expand in this environment. I have no idea where which tariff is going to hit where. But, actually, if you're thinking in terms of supply chains, then, a, you might find, opportunities for, you know, better supply chains now that everything is is up in the air.

And more important, if you want to make changes in your supply chain and you move into a new territory in this environment, you might actually do it with, in in terms that are more beneficial because governments are going to be more welcoming of new business because they are also afraid.

So being resilient does not mean doing nothing. It means buttoning down the hatches, and it means keeping an eye for new opportunities.

You don't do this just from position of power.

The best way the better the better times to implement new opportunities is during crisis like this.

So it would be beneficial for business leaders to think in those terms.

Mark, this this is an interesting point because I guess, you know, getting involved in this kind of activities such as, realigning your supply chains, looking for new territories, that sort of thing is gonna depend on whether you take a view that the current volatility is gonna bring about a permanent change to changing relationships or whether we might just all slip back into how it was before January this year.

Yeah. And I I I don't think business leaders are going to try and, guess too much on that. And and George makes a really good point. Being resilient doesn't mean sitting there and and and kind of shutting up shop.

It's in fact the opposite. Yeah. It's defined as it's your ability to recover position and get back on course. That's what being resilient means.

So there's there's different ways of looking at it, but, and different models that people use. But, essentially, what you're trying to do is manage a business for four features in in the model that I use. One is that you you've kind of got robustness. So you've got enough strength in your balance sheet.

You've got enough, strength in your business model that it can take a shock and and keep going. You've gotta be able to respond very quickly. So liquidity and and that kind of agility that George described is really, really important.

Redundancy is certainly something. And and when we look back at the banking crisis fifteen years ago now, that was something that a lot of banks didn't have. And by redundancy, I mean, the ability to substitute something with a critical feature. So it could be an alternative source of funding in a in a simple example.

You know? So it's having fallback systems and positions for important parts of your business model. And the last thing is the resourcefulness, which is a lot about leadership and management capacity to make decisions and execute, which again brings you back to some of that point that that George was mentioning. So you it's it's really quite a dynamic way of keeping to your strategy.

And George is is right. There will be companies sitting there this morning who are thinking for their particular markets and their particular position, there's some opportunities that come out of all of this. So, you know, I I I think it's, it's important not to be too negative even if there's a general feeling of challenge and uncertainty.

Chapter

Investment Strategies in a Volatile Market

We just can I just get you to come back on that point about Apple's application to their inventory suddenly? We've got this ninety day pause. Of course, that doesn't mean no tariffs at all. Everyone is on ten percent at the moment except China, obviously. Is that is that a window to address inventory shifted around at the cheapest possible price right now?

In some businesses, yes. Yeah. Yeah. In some businesses, that that'll definitely be a a strategy. And I think, George mentioned before we came on that he's hearing from some clients who are moving activities back into the UK. There's some opportunities to do things, and the UK is a good location to do them. So as I said, there's there's upsides for some businesses, and and that's what leaders are looking at is, you know, how do I safely steer my firm and and stick to my strategy as much as possible.

George, are there investment opportunities, right now? Because one of the stories I've seen kicking around is that, you know, if if these tariffs are gonna stay in place, you're gonna need to invest perhaps in production lines in the US. The quickest way to get around that maybe to actually in get involved in some form of m and a in the US, acquire a producer in some way?

The answer is yes. Of course, there are investment opportunities. They're not offered. However, they're not obvious. Mhmm. And the reason is that uncertainty is is at the highest level it's been.

So the answer is there are opportunities, a lot of them. You know, prices are much lower.

But the payoffs are not going to come necessarily from where you think they might come. There are plenty of of outcomes and scenarios.

So a thousand investors are going to invest in a thousand different scenarios. One or two of those scenarios are going to play out, and these investors are going to make a killing.

The rest that gets strong are going to to lose their money.

So, yes, there are investment opportunities, but somebody really needs to do a lot of homework if they want to to uncover opportunities and they think that the risk has been overpriced in this particular situation.

Because, yes, risk is being overpriced everywhere right now. That's that's that's the nature of these retrenchments.

But, and to to to give you an example, yes, you know, NVIDIA is much cheaper now than than what it was, three or four months ago.

Okay. Even though it's still more expensive than than than most, stocks out there.

But if you see a global economic slowdown, then you could see less demand for data centers, and and so on and so forth. So you don't know that the slightly more expensive Nvidia is a big opportunity versus the hugely expensive Nvidia three months ago. And that's the point. You have to do a lot of homework, and you have to get lucky.

Mark, that's that's interesting. A lot of homework and a lot of luck.

Well, yeah, I think the homework is take for granted. You know? And I guess look. I mean, I'm I'm, you know, I'm an optimist by nature, and there's a few things that I think, that that one can reflect on positively. One, George mentioned our c suite survey, which is is a a good barometer of where businesses are at, international businesses particularly.

For the fourth year running, I think we've had our maybe the fifth year this year, very high optimism levels. And this was done at the start of the year, so before the current round of uncertainty, but certainly, it it was in in January of the year.

Very high positive view coming from a lot of CEOs.

And I think I've said this before.

Part of the reason I think that that kind of positive stance is there is because you have a generation of business leaders that have been through a lot of uncertainty in the last ten years, and they're pretty good at managing it. And, you know, they've they've weathered a lot of things. So I think that, you know, they may have taken a dip since we measured the survey, but I think you you'll find that businesses are generally set up for resilience and trying to do resilience. Second thing I think and and this is a more general point that George probably has views on.

Chapter

The Importance of Global Trade Dynamics

When you look at the the the importing and the trade global trade stats, the US and China are very important, but they're not actually the biggest. If you put the EU and some other blocks together, they they actually import far more. And I think there's an interesting longer term trend in terms of how trade will develop between different parts of the world if we do end up in a in a very new paradigm at the end of twenty twenty five.

And, you know, even for the UK and the EU, and again, you know where I stand on that over the years.

There's plenty of science that actually working closer together could be good for the UK and could be good for the EU. So we may enter a slightly different positive frame in in in some economies. And I think, look, the last thing is really that, you you know, opportunity tends to find optimists rather than pessimists. So I think, you know, this, as George said a moment ago, there's good reasons to to be, positive even in difficult circumstances and try and work businesses back onto strategy and move forward.

And that's why I'm not in charge of a business, fortunately, for everyone who might have been involved. Just go back on that, that issue. What you were saying there, Mark, it really does seem to suggest, what you were saying about the US and China not being the biggest markets. It does suggest that diversification, seeking out new territories for your product, really is a priority at the moment, assuming that the trouble that we're in is going to remain at least permanent for beyond the short term.

Yeah. It could be. And and look, I'm not you know, it's it's very difficult to generalize because there's a vast difference between making and selling cars and making and selling cheese. You know?

So one doesn't want to be too simplistic about it. But but when you look at the imports, that's I mean, the US is a very important market, but it's not the biggest buyer in the world. And if you look at some of the trading blocks that are there, they're actually more like thirty five to forty percent of global trade is coming through them, including the EU as an important comp component of that. So, yes, for businesses, diversifying your markets is going to be an interesting thing to look at.

It's also a very difficult and longer term thing to look at. So there's no panacea there. But I I'm I'm merely suggesting that if we end up at the end of twenty twenty five with a a different tariff regime than we've had for the last fifteen to twenty years, businesses will look to different markets and then start to explore that opportunity.

Chapter

Corporate Leadership and Government Relations

George, we've talked here, I mean, the the issue stems from, a government, and I wonder how much, company leaders, corporate leaders should rely on governments to resolve these issues, or should they be sorting it out themselves, not waiting for them?

Well, so I've been thinking about this all morning, and I've been thinking about Apple in specific.

So Apple was forced to charter planes to to avoid its its phones costing double. But, eventually, if this trades pack continues, then that inventory is going to be run down. And then, you know, new parts or new, phones will have to to come from somewhere with with a tariff.

Okay.

And on the other hand, you have, you have the EU threatening to impose, sanctions on on US tech companies as a retaliation for for what the United States is is doing, which is, by the way, worse.

The same way that tariffs might hurt, the US economy, the same way tariffs can hurt or or those measures could hurt the EU economy, KJ, just to be sure. And since you asked about businesses, I was thinking this morning, well, what if I was Tim Cook? And the two largest trading blocks, one says you cannot import your phones and the other one says I'm going to punish you because the US, isn't acting the the way I wanted to.

I wonder at what point will the bigger companies decide to assert themselves?

If for example, Tim Cook woke up tomorrow morning and said, well, I'm not going to support the next version of iOS. Let's see how you guys like that.

The world could be in trouble.

If, if Google did something similar, the world would be in trouble.

Okay. And, you know, that that sort of war I'm getting.

Most companies obviously have to abide by their rules and try to find, solutions. But there are big companies out there, Kevin, that so far have not been setting their own rules or at the very least, you know, they they've been meekly following what's happening. But I wonder if they get pushed too too hard against the wall, will they react in a way that's, you know, concomitant with businesses being the pool of power as much as government?

That's a fascinating topic, Mark. Can we rely on really big business, the broligarchs even, to exert some, pressure?

I don't really know. I mean, the I I there's lots of things I think that that even in very large businesses, people would be thinking about at the moment.

I think the, you know, the area that George is touching on, I think there's been a lot of media hype about what the EU is saying, but I think we also have to remember that the EU is at a fairly strong position on data privacy and on the use of algorithms and particularly social media platforms and so on, which is a backdrop to that. So I think you're you're you're steering away into another conversation in a way, and I'm I'm not sure what, what the large businesses are gonna particularly do, particularly large tech businesses are gonna do in response to this.

Chapter

Navigating the Future: Advice for Corporate Leaders

So that's a story still to play out as yet. We're coming to the end of our time. Mark, what would you given the given the, business landscape as it is right now, what would your top piece piece of advice be to corporate leaders?

I I think it is to to prepare for uncertainty, but not to, not to be downbeat about it and to look for the opportunities as well. You know? And I think I I'm, you know, as I said a moment ago, I tend to be more on the the optimistic side. I think most businesses will find their way through what is a difficult period and and take things forward.

George, what should we be looking out for?

As an economist, I will say that there are going to be repercussions from all that's happening. Even the uncertainty alone is going to have economic repercussions, and they might be medium to long term.

As an asset manager, I would say there are opportunities out there as there are risks, and you might get rewarded more if you get it right than you would have in an environment of quantitative easing, you know, where everything was going up at the same time.

As somebody who analyzes businesses for a living, I would say this, new businesses tend to emerge at the time of crisis.

The new business leaders emerge at the time of crisis. This isn't crisis are usually bad news for the incumbents and good news for the challengers.

Okay? Because the status quo is shaken up. So there are going to be battles, and you have to have a modicum of optimism whether you're an incumbent or a challenger. You have to have a modicum of optimism to fight those battles. Nobody goes in a battle thinking, oh my god, the economy is awful, and I'm going to lose. Okay? You you should not be at the helm if if you're thinking like that.

So you have to think in in those terms, and the incumbents have to think, okay. So what are my challenges? Where am I going to to get hit from? Who's going to to doubt this priority of my product? And then you're going to have the challengers who are going to say, well, hold on. This is an opportunity because, for example, as as we gave an example, a company like Apple is getting hit. Can I sell more of my own product?

Okay. And so on and so so forth. We at the end of this, I suspect we will see some changes, in in the leadership of certain sectors.

Mark, that seems to imply that corporate leaders are gonna need to be flexible to get through the crisis.

I I think that's that's always the case. You know, I think great entrepreneurs and great business leaders tend to be, tend to be very flexible and very creative, you know, in a in a general sense beyond whatever their technical background is. So I think that there's nothing new with that. Actually, as I was listening to to George, I was just casting my mind back.

Chapter

Influencing the Future of Business

Charles Handy, who passed away before Christmas last year and may recall, was a great, business writer, and very kind of human person, you know, very sensible, normal kind of approach to things. He had a great quote, which is the future is not inevitable. We can influence it if we know what we want it to be. I think that's good advice for a lot of businesses at the moment.

Good advice and a good place to bring this podcast to an end. Mark Kennedy, George Lagarius, thanks for joining us today, and thanks to everyone out there for listening. I've been Gavin Hinks. Goodbye.