#457 Leadership’s Most Neglected Discipline: Why Long-Term Planning Defines the Future of Every Organisation - Article by Niels Brabandt
Leadership’s Most Neglected Discipline: Why Long-Term Planning Defines the Future of Every Organisation
By Niels Brabandt
In a business environment shaped by volatility, partial information and relentless competitive pressure, organisations increasingly look to their leaders for something deceptively simple: clarity about the future. Yet many leaders struggle precisely at this point. They either overpromise with unwarranted certainty or underdeliver by withholding direction entirely. Both responses undermine trust. Both weaken organisational resilience. And both illustrate why long-term planning is no longer a technical exercise, but a core leadership responsibility.
In this week’s analysis, I explore why sustainable, long-term planning must be grounded in evidence, expertise and credibility, and why leaders who rely on instinct alone place their organisations at significant risk.
The false comfort of confident predictions
At a recent event, a leadership team proudly unveiled an “Agenda 2040,” projecting the next 15 years of corporate development. The audience responded with disbelief, even laughter. The problem was not ambition, it was credibility.
As leaders, we cannot foresee the next decade with precision, nor should we pretend to. Business decision makers cannot rely on “fortune-teller leadership.” When leaders present long-term visions unsupported by rigorous methodology, they invite scepticism, disengagement and strategic drift.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are leaders who respond to future-oriented questions with uncertainty or avoidance. When a team asks, “Where are we heading?” and hears, “I don’t know,” uncertainty becomes a vacuum quickly filled by speculation. Psychologists describe this dynamic as overthinking: when information gaps trigger negative assumptions. In organisations, overthinking spreads quickly, affects performance and erodes trust.
Both extremes carry consequences. Long-term planning requires neither rigid predictions nor evasive ambiguity, it requires informed judgement.
Why instinct fails as a decision-making tool
Relying on gut feeling alone is a hallmark of overconfidence bias, a pattern that becomes more pronounced the higher a leader rises in the hierarchy. Seniority can insulate leaders from critical feedback; teams may hesitate to challenge questionable assumptions.
But instinct is not a strategy. Leaders must be able to answer a fundamental question: How did you reach this conclusion?
If the answer cannot withstand scrutiny, long-term decisions become vulnerable. Strategic goals become negotiable opinions rather than evidence-based commitments. The result is organisational instability.
Instinct has value only when supported by:
data,
professional forecasting,
credible interpretation,
and transparent communication.
Without these elements, gut feeling becomes guesswork dressed as confidence.
Evidence-based forecasting: the backbone of long-term leadership
True long-term planning requires expertise that goes far beyond a spreadsheet exercise. Professional forecasting, particularly stochastic forecasting, relies on probability distributions, scenario mapping and rigorous data models. This work cannot be delegated to someone who is “good with Excel,” nor can it be improvised by intuition.
Organisations need professionals with qualifications in data science and analytics. Forecasting requires methodological depth:
economic indicators,
product lifecycle analysis,
market entry modelling,
workforce planning,
financial scenario testing.
Leaders who understand this methodology gain a decisive advantage: credibility. They can justify decisions. They can explain assumptions. Most importantly, they can articulate strategy in a way that teams can trust.
The human dimension: expectation management and negotiation
Every long-term plan encounters negotiation, especially in areas such as sales, budgeting and workforce planning. Teams will naturally argue for favourable targets, lower risk exposure or reduced stretch goals.
Leaders must therefore master two skills that define long-term direction:
Managing expectations: ensuring that ambition remains realistic while acknowledging emotional and political dynamics inside the organisation.
Negotiating effectively: allowing room for dialogue without compromising strategic coherence.
Leaders who avoid negotiation for fear of conflict often find themselves trapped between inconsistent goals and frustrated teams. Those who negotiate transparently build trust, even when decisions are unpopular.
Experience and expertise: the dual currency of credibility
Long-term planning demands both practical experience and technical expertise. Experience alone is insufficient. Expertise alone lacks context.
Organisations that underestimate this dual requirement fall into predictable traps:
losing institutional knowledge through premature retirements,
bringing back former employees on costly contracts,
assigning complex planning tasks to individuals unprepared for the analytical demands.
Leaders must assess whether their teams possess the right balance. If expertise is missing, organisations must be willing to invest, whether through hiring, training or external support.
Delivering facts: the leader’s final responsibility
Ultimately, every long-term plan is judged by its factual foundation. A leader’s legitimacy depends on the ability to substantiate decisions. When leaders cannot answer basic questions about their assumptions or data sources, they lose influence, and teams lose confidence.
Facts are not optional. They are the currency of modern leadership.
Long-term planning succeeds when leaders:
confront uncertainty honestly,
apply rigorous methodology,
communicate transparently,
manage expectations responsibly,
negotiate with integrity,
and base every strategic statement on verifiable evidence.
This is not merely operational competence, it is the standard by which leadership is evaluated.
The future belongs to credible leaders
In an era defined by complexity and rapid change, organisations do not need leaders who claim to predict the future. They need leaders who can prepare for it. Long-term planning, executed with expertise and integrity, is the anchor that allows organisations to navigate uncertainty without losing direction.
Leaders who commit to this standard will earnI earn trust, organisational resilience and strategic advantage. Those who dismiss it will find themselves reacting rather than leading.
For organisations seeking guidance on strategic planning, forecasting, leadership performance or organisational development, further insights and support are available at NB-Networks.com.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast & Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
The year is coming to an end and of course people will now ask you where are we going with this organization? Where is this company going? Where is this project going? Where is the strategy going? And that's exactly where you have to tell them what to do. The question always as a leader, how do you handle long term planning? I received quite a number of emails where people said, I had a couple of experiences with my leaders that it wasn't too great.
Some of them did really well and they ask is this the right way? And some of them I really could confirm, yes, it's done very well. Others however, Not so much. The question is, how does long-term leadership work? How to lead and especially leadership and long-term how to deliver excellent leadership regarding long-term planning? That's our topic of this week's podcast. Hello and welcome.
If you're listening or watching on YouTube or listening to me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or any other platform, hello and welcome. We are getting straight into it. As soon as we talk about long-term planning, one thing which happened last year was I was at an event where I spoke and there was the board and one thing I didn't know, but I saw it because as I said in the audience afterwards, the CEO was talking together with a board and a panel and then they presented, I'm not making this up, last year they presented the agenda 2040. They wanted to present where the company is heading in, well, a bit more than 15 years. And of course, immediate laughter in the audience, because often people think, yeah, I'd like to have the same fortune teller skills to be able to tell the next 15 years in advance. We probably can't tell the next five years in advance, at least not properly, and especially not only based on opinions. So the situation is people uncertain about the future.
If you tell them, I don't know what happens, we have to see, they will be uncertain about anything. However, if you tell them, well, I know everything, they probably ask you, how do you know? And if you don't have a great answer to that, then there's nothing else. There's basically nothing as an answer when you can't answer this question. It's getting nasty reasonably quickly. So it is very important that you deal with the future and these uncertainties pretty quickly. The question now is with these uncertainties, what should you do?
When we deal with uncertainties, you of course can just guess and that's what many people do. However, as soon as you guess, people will always counter with a question and say, how do you get to that point of view? And then it's getting difficult from there. The main point here is often as soon as you claim anything, and we have way too many leaders who are very confident, over typical overconfidence bias. And this overconfidence bias leads to you thinking you know it all. And especially when you are in a very high position of power, people often do not dare to speak up, especially when you have shown certain negative leadership behaviours towards criticism. Or people questioning your decisions, you will probably say, who are you and why are you questioning my authority?
Not you in the future for a career. And that is of course a massive problem. No one has the crystal ball to know the future. However, people still think and they have a right to get told where does this organisation actually want to develop? And there are solutions to this issue. When we get to the solutions, number one is always which methods do you apply? And the first method people often have is experience.
And experience is very, very valuable. I come from the generation when I started working working in Germany. My first job after uni, unemployment was reasonably high, economy was in crisis, lots of costs due to the reunification of Germany was the end of the 90s. And many people were afraid if they have their job in two years time or in six months time. So they thought, what could we do to predict the future? And they relied on experience. However, the main issue and the main problem was that to get more jobs on the market, the government gave a tax benefit.
A very, very favourable tax regime on sending people into retirement early. So organisations could send people into retirement early. And this means people from the age of 50. So they made an offer to many people in my organisation where I worked back in the days. And unfortunately, in my department, anyone took it. Absolutely everyone. Everyone took it.
And the problem then, of course, is we suddenly had projects where we sat there with all the young people, with all the young folks. And I remember one project where I was co-leader. And I was sitting in the room saying, look, we are all basically between 21 and 28 here. Anyone has an idea what's going on?
Because I don't. And no one else said. So what happened was they spoke again to the people in retirement, brought them back in on tremendously expensive contracts as a consultant. And that of course was not what is expected to be done when you are a leader. Always be aware you need to have experience on board. However, one of the methods you also have to look into is professional forecasting. And that is something which you do not do.
That is something which you do not do in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet within 10 minutes. When you say we need professional forecasting. When you say we need professional forecasting, it simply means you need to have professionals who are data science experts or at least data science qualified. It doesn't need to be a university degree, although that might help. There are other methods of qualification. Very rarely someone just read themselves into data science. That is almost impossible, except when you have a certain talent for it.
The professional forecasting is extremely important because that gives you and stochastic forecasting. When you want to talk about stochastic forecasting, stochastic forecasting means you take probabilities and then look into the future. That look into the future is extremely important when you want to make decisions in favour of a product or against the product, in favour of a market entry or against the market entry, in favour of hiring new salespeople or or against hiring new salespeople or even laying people off. Professional forecasting is something which needs to be done. However. You probably know when you have professional forecasting and then you sit there with the sales team, a member of the sales team, and you ask them, so let's talk about goal setting. What do you think is going to be your goal for next year?
And the answer will be immediately, oh, you know, the economy's in crisis. Nothing's working. I think 50% of my goal for this year, maximum. Maximum. Probably less. Probably less. And that is, of course. The problem.
You have to, and these are two aspects now, do two things: manage expectations and master the art of the negotiation. I can tell you it's not reading the book the Art of the Deal. Managing expectations means you have to manage that sometimes people will be disappointed. And I know when you disappoint people, the atmosphere in the office might not be too great for the next couple of days. And it doesn't feel too nice when you enter the coffee room and suddenly anyone stops talking because the leader entered the room. However, I can tell you this will happen sooner or later. And if you are unable or unwilling to handle that, you should reconsider if leadership is really for you.
Of course, I would really appreciate if someone knows the method that they always appreciate what you say. But there are moments where you have to make unpopular decisions and of course it will show. Manage the expectations. And in addition to that, always master negotiations. Because as soon as you set a certain expectation, people start to negotiate. And one thing is one aspect is extremely important here. You cannot sit there as a leader and say, I say you obey.
There is always room for negotiation. If you do not leave room for negotiation, people will always say there is no employee participation in the organisation and that makes everything worse from there. So be sure that you leave room for negotiations. If you now want to implement all of this, very important. If you now want to implement all of this, step number one is of course, cheque what is the experience you have on board. When you now realise you do not have the experience on board that you need at the moment, then you need to talk to an agency or to freelancers. I just talked to one of my clients, they just got an external manager in as a CFO, an interim manager, and that person had tremendous value within the first 100 days, probably within the first 60 days, they managed more than other managers did within a whole year.
The experience is either there or you have to pay to get the expertise in. You then have to pay to get the experience in. There is no fast forward for experience. No one, of course, some people worked more, some people worked less. And as you know from my podcast, I'm probably on the end of I like to work a bit more. However, the point here is the experience is something you cannot read in a book. The experience is nothing you can just write down and think you have it. The experience is nothing you can make up because people will just put two questions forward and you can't answer them properly and you lose all your social legitimation.
No one is going to follow you in the future. Experience is something you have or you do not have. And of course, when you work more, you will be experienced way sooner than others.
That's what I always tell people. Anyone has the right to work only 15 hours a week. However, don't complain that the people with 30 or 40 hours a week or even more have more experience and probably get the promotion a bit quicker than you did. So the experience is step number one. Step number two is the expertise. If you talk about data science, you need professionally qualified people. May it be certificates from universities, may it be a degree, may it be both, may it be practical experience or vocational training on the matter.
However, you need professional expertise. Someone who simply thinks, I know. All by gut feeling is no one who is going to help you in the future. And just to be clear, we all know that one case where gut feeling was the right decision over the data. We all know that one case where the data was probably not very well calculated, but the gut feeling of a manager saved the situation. We all know that one situation. However. N equals one is no evidence, as Frank Kus from Harvard Business School tends to say.
You need to be aware of the fact that expertise is something you have in the long run. The expertise will always win. So you need both experience and expertise. And by the way, why in the long run this always wins? You know this from sports. A team from League seven can always win against a Champions League team once. Probably you know this from cup games, FA Cup or the German DFB Pokal or any kind of cup challenge, you know, or the World Cup.
Suddenly the underdog beats the world champion. Yes, this might happen once. When you let them play ten games against each other. Nine out of 10 or at least eight out of 10 of these games will be in favour of the team with the experience and the expertise. It's led by science, facts, proof and evidence. And that leads me to my last point, deliver the facts. When you want to do long term planning and you stick to gut feeling, people will rightfully so ask you, how do you get to that conclusion?
And if you don't have a great answer, people will say, I'm not believing a single word you say. And by the way, my opinion is this one and why is my opinion not the same value than yours? And when you then say, I'm a leader, you're not, that's why my opinion is worth more. That is where everything goes downhill very, very quickly. So be sure that you always deliver the facts. If you do everything, as we said right here, so you really look into the future, you deal with it, you know the methods, you have professional forecasting, you manage all the expectations and negotiate well with experience and expertise and deliver on the matter, the promise and the facts, then everything will turn out very well. And I wish you all the best doing so.
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