Florence Gaub on reading the future: War, weak signals, and wild scenarios

In this episode of Leaders Unplugged with David Bach, the NATO Defense College research director, futurist and military strategist Florence Gaub explains why “strategic foresight is the gym for the mind,” how weak signals from distant places, online communities, and emerging technologies can reveal tomorrow’s shocks, and why reducing surprise buys organizations their most precious asset: time.

Gaub dissects the Strait of Hormuz, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and China’s climate strategy to show how wishful thinking at the highest levels can cripple even the most sophisticated governments – and what executives must do differently.

Gaub insists that “all companies above a certain size today will be affected by geopolitics” and that every leadership team should build an annual discipline of horizon scanning and scenario work. She argues that whoever “finds the right answers to climate change first” will define the next global power hierarchy, that science fiction is a good indicator for future conflicts, and shares answers to a deceptively simple question: “What future would you be willing to fight for?”

Leaders Unplugged features real talk with the impactful. Candid, honest, actionable, and fresh from behind the scenes. It is presented by IMD in collaboration with Remote Daily.