January 26, 2026
Volatility and uncertainty are no longer a phase – they’re the last guests at a party and they refuse to leave. They’re not conditions anymore but are instead our basic operating realities.
As we move into 2026, companies and organizations of every shape and form are navigating a marketplace shaped by rapid technological shifts, geopolitical tension, economic “murkiness,” and a media ecosystem saturated with data, opinion, and misinformation. We’ve got access to much more information than we can actually digest, but the paramount challenges are interpretation, prioritization, and judgment.
For leaders – those making essential decisions every day, with an extraordinarily long tail on ramifications or outcomes – this moment in time demands a different posture. We all know what happens when you assume. Presumptions are dangerous. Guesswork is insufficient. And belief or hunches – without being tethered to fact and reality – are a liability. The organizations that will outperform in 2026 are those that build disciplined ways of knowing: How they are perceived, what is changing around them, and which signals – be they loud or quiet – truly matter. Oh, and aside, you need to be able to do that with leaner budgets and staffs pushed to capacity.
Real forward vision is no longer optional. It’s the line of demarcation between owning your future or having that future decided for you and your team.
So how to get an accurate picture? A few ideas…
GEO Audits Reveal Competing Truths — and the Real Insight Lives in Between
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) audits are rapidly becoming a critical tool for understanding how organizations show up in AI-driven environments. Unlike traditional search or media monitoring, GEO audits surface how large language models and AI tools describe your organization, your leadership, and your sector – synthesizing hundreds and even thousands of sources into a single narrative. They can even help measure brand integrity based on how they interpret an organization’s “story.”
What is unearthed can be, well, unnerving: Multiple, sometimes conflicting perspectives are presented as “truth.” We just completed a project for a client where different LLM/AI models drew vastly different conclusions and pointed in diametric fashion to organizational strengths and weaknesses. The company was taken aback, understandably, but by digging into the searches, criteria, and sourcing, we translated that there can be truth in more than one story. One model may emphasize innovation and leadership. Another may highlight risk, controversy, or outdated perceptions. None of them are entirely wrong – and none are entirely complete.
The real value of a GEO audit or something similar isn’t confirmation; it’s the contrast underneath. Reality and truth are often found in the tension between the viewpoints, and leaders must be prepared to translate these outputs, apply context, and understand/explain why certain narratives surface. Knowing how LLMs “translate” your organization is now inseparable from knowing how markets, employees, regulators, and customers do as well. You don’t want to be in a position where you’re conferring with a board member, investor, key employee or important customer, and they question a “fact” and your opening response is, “Well, I think the reason for that is…”
Seeing Around the Next Corner Isn’t Just Possible – It’s Critical
The concept of Horizon Scanning has moved from a strategic “nice to have” to a core business imperative. Insight and foresight – about pending issues, market trends, regulatory shifts, technological inflection points, and underlying social expectations – are the bedrock to sound judgment and effective decision-making. More than that, Horizon Scanning is the fuel for organizational speed and agility.
Organizations that rely solely on historical data or current-state dashboards are already playing catch up. The signals that matter most often emerge around the margins or the edges, maybe in the form of early regulatory chatter, weak signals from adjacent industries, shifts in stakeholder language, or emerging risks that have not yet crystallized into headlines.
Effective Horizon Scanning is disciplined, ongoing, and cross-functional. It connects external intelligence with internal strategy. It allows leaders at every level to test assumptions, stress-test plans, and make decisions with an understanding of what could happen – not just what is happening or has already happened.
Horizon Scanning is a designed operating model that tracks how signals emerge, mature, and are evaluated, not a single tool or alerting system. AI LLMs and agents are used to manage scale, consistency, and signal flow with humans retaining full control over prioritization, escalation, and action. It allows risk teams, corporate communications, legal, and other functions to actively manage current risks and have confidence that emerging risks are also being watched and flagged. In the absence of Horizon Scanning, the ability to process vast amounts of this information at scale and correlate it to company strategy would not be possible without significant additional headcount.
For many of our clients, that foresight can absolutely be the radical difference between seizing a fleeting opportunity to grow or secure market share, or moving into protection mode as a crisis emerges or moves from simmer to boil. Reputations and enterprise value are built over decades, but there hasn’t been any point in history where they can both disappear this fast.
Don’t Over-Index on the Latest Signal – Veracity and Accuracy Require Breadth, Depth, and Context
In our hyper-accelerated news cycles, recency bias has become one of the most dangerous traps facing leaders. What happened this morning can feel vastly more important than what has been unfolding quietly for months or years. And, to exacerbate the situation, traditional algorithms reward immediacy. Social platforms amplify the loudest voices (whether they deserve it or not). But, back to the idea that two different things can both be true: Strategic accuracy requires balance and perspective.
Organizations need a full, multi-source picture of reality. That means combining open-source intelligence with proprietary data, paid research, sector-specific analysis, and internal metrics. It means valuing depth (and, thanks to the smart application of LLM/AI models, you don’t have to sacrifice speed). You must resist the urge to let minor signals, often louder in the moment, drive outsized conclusions.
Because we’re dealing in facts here: Paying for high-quality information and translation is not a cost center; it’s risk mitigation or growth accelerant. Teams that rely exclusively on free, surface-level data are often making decisions based on incomplete or distorted views. Resolve to do this differently in 2026, as recognizing when to tamp the brakes and broaden the lens will separate sound, confident leadership from reactive management.
Lastly, Welcome to FTRT — Faster Than Real Time
Reset your clocks: Decision-making happening in real time is a dinosaur. This has to be a fundamental change in thinking about the possible, and what will soon be an imperative – the concept of Faster than Real Time (FTRT) is upon us, ready or not.
Markets move before news breaks. Reputational risks surface in private channels before they trend publicly. AI systems synthesize and distribute narratives instantly. If you and your organization are waiting for confirmation, then you are likely responding to outcomes rather than shaping them.
An important disclaimer: FTRT doesn’t mean rushing decisions but instead it means preparing for them. Scenario planning, looking at pre-defined thresholds, and clear decision criteria allow organizations to move fast in the moment with intelligence and anticipation of what comes next. Our best-performing clients are all about building systems and teams that can interpret weak signals, anticipate second-order effects, and move with confidence before uncertainty hardens into crisis.
This pre-planning has another critical payoff because it allows overworked, understaffed teams to move decisively without scrambling when the moment requires action.
In 2026, speed without clarity remains reckless – but clarity without speed is ineffective, and the cost can be catastrophic.
To Quote the X Files, “The Truth Is Out There” – but Only if You Know How to Find and Translate It
Truth may be more elusive and subjective than ever, but it has not disappeared. It’s simply buried beneath noise, bias, mythology, and competing narratives. Organizations, large and small, that want to succeed in 2026 will aggressively seek reality and invest in the tools, processes, and expertise required to separate insight from rhetoric.
Ronald Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify.” Today’s environment demands a sharper mindset: Don’t trust, validate. Validate sources. Validate assumptions. Validate the signals guiding your most critical decisions.
2026 isn’t the year to presume, guess, or believe. It’s the year to get the insight and foresight that fundamentally underpin and inform sound judgment and success.
