Boards Can’t Predict Geopolitics. Can They Prepare for It?
As geopolitics reshapes the business landscape, boards are rethinking how they oversee risk—and what kind of directors they need around the table.
Key Takeaways:
- Nearly three-quarters of executives in a new survey cited geopolitical instability as the biggest risk to global economic growth.
- Only 5% of Russell 3000 companies currently disclose how geopolitical risk is monitored or governed at the board level.
- Boards are being forced to rethink how they prepare for and respond to geopolitical risks.
Should Boards Recruit Directors Who Are Geopolitical Experts?
The board had spent years preparing for cyberattacks, activist investors, and AI. But when war broke out, trade routes shifted, and energy prices spiked, the governance committee realized it faced a different challenge: building a board equipped for a world in which geopolitics had become a part of everyday business. Should they recruit a military general? A former secretary of state? How do you build a board for a world that has become harder to predict?
A just-released study conducted during the first quarter of 2026 found that 72% of surveyed executives believe geopolitical instability to be the greatest potential risk to global economic growth, up from 51% just three months earlier. Shifting trade policy and energy prices ranked second and third among executives’ concerns, underscoring how geopolitical events ripple through the global economy. Increasingly, boards are being forced to rethink how they prepare for and respond to these threats. Despite this, according to a recent Stanford Law School study, only 5% of Russell 3000 companies currently disclose how geopolitical risk is monitored or governed at the board level, suggesting that many of them haven’t formalized the oversight of one of their biggest strategic challenges.
“Today, everyone on the board should have geopolitical smarts, just as every director needs to gain some muscle around new technologies,” says Dominic Schofield, chair of Korn Ferry’s UK Board and CEO Services practice. Wars in Europe and the Middle East, tariffs, industrial policy, and rising competition between the US and China have transformed geopolitical developments from distant headlines into boardroom issues that shape supply chains and long-term investment decisions.
“Understanding political risk has become as important as understanding technology or finance.”
For multinational companies in particular, understanding political risk has become as important as understanding technology or finance. Schofield believes that while having a former ambassador, cabinet secretary, or military officer on the board can provide valuable perspective, committees shouldn’t assume that adding just one subject-matter expert is enough. Nels Olson, vice chairman and co-leader of Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Services practice, agrees, saying, “If a board believes that a single director can sort out all of their international issues, I don’t think that’s realistic.”
Instead, Schofield says, for up-to-date geopolitical resources, assembling forums or panels of outside experts could be a better way for boards to get trustworthy information on a regular basis. He recommends building a board with directors who are seasoned, agile, and curious enough to ask probing questions. Olson points out that translation is one of the most useful skills for a board director with government experience: “Politics is a foreign language to many business leaders.” The most valuable directors, he says, help executives “distinguish political theater from a true business risk.”
To be sure, boards have a long history of recruiting for whatever issue was exposed by the last crisis. After the global financial crisis came accounting experts; the age of cyberattacks brought technology specialists. Today’s geopolitical uncertainty raises a similar question: Do boards need another category of expert, or do they simply need directors with the shrewd judgment to navigate each challenge as it comes? After all, even the most geopolitically informed board cannot predict future wars, elections, or trade disputes. Instead, their objective is to ensure management has considered multiple scenarios and built an organization resilient enough to adapt to them.
The directors best equipped for today’s environment share qualities that transcend any single domain of expertise, Schofield believes. He points above all to the ability to remain steady under pressure. Boards can’t wait until every political fact is known before making decisions, he says, so the best directors stay anchored to the company’s purpose while adapting as events unfold. “A quality you see in the very best leaders is the ability to stay calm under fire,” Schofield says.
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