The only way to avoid being blind-sided is to maintain as wide a view as possible. Consume the general business pages, not just your industry journal. Better still, identify a sector where you have a commonality and read their trade press. Build your personal network as broadly as possible and make sure your advisors are giving you that cross-sectoral view – I try to shoe-horn it into just about every Brexit client meeting I go to. If nothing else, it helps people realise they are not the only ones pondering an uncertain future, and that solutions exist in the strangest of places. Because as well as your ‘no deal’ competition, commonalities with businesses in other sectors can provide inspiration, solutions and new and powerful networks. Imagine a high-end food retailer which might ordinarily think of itself in the same broad bracket as a supermarket, with its preoccupations around potential staffing shortages, tariffs, border delays etc. Now imagine how that high-end food retailer starts to approach this issue if they regard themselves as an export business first and foremost. While the supermarket frets over a weak pound raising the prices of Spanish tomatoes and Italian pasta, the luxury retailer will focus on the fact that sterling depreciation should woo more tourists to its UK stores. This retailer might now ask itself what Brexit tricks it can learn from its new bedfellows: airlines, hotels or handbag makers. It seems that in preparing for Brexit we might need to be more imaginative in where to look for good ideas.
UK companies preparing for a no deal KPMG outcome need to expand their view of their own business to better protect themselves, according to Mark Essex, UK director of public policy at Brexit. In a blog post, he said firms should stop using narrow sector definitions and instead take a broader outlook, thereby gaining an understanding of the tail and headwinds facing not only their competition, but also other businesses in different sectors.