So far it remains unclear about how the United Kingdom (UK) will disentangle itself from the European Union (EU) and how its relationship with EU will eventually be.

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All these changes definitely create a lot of uncertainties for business leaders, since they have to think and implement the right corporate strategy to deal with the future post-Brexit environment. As a result, they will have to constantly follow any updates and/or progress made about the Brexit negotiations between UK and EU.

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It is indeed a very flawed assumption to believe that whatever will happen in the UK and EU during and after the Brexit negotiations will remain 'confined' within the European continent. In fact, since the world is globalised and so inter-connected, everybody will eventually feel the impact of whatever is happening now and in the future.

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To have a better understanding of Brexit on their organisations, corporate leaders will already have to start thinking of the potential impact of Brexit on their businesses. At the very least, they will have to do this AIM exercise so as to understand the big picture within their organisations.

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• Assess - A complete organisational assessment will be needed. This exercise will be opportunity to understand better how much of their corporate activities are linked or related (directly or indirectly) to the UK and EU markets. It will also provide a better view of how dependent the organisation is with the European markets.

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• Identify - After having assessed the situation, the various risks and/or weak points should be identified so that a better strategy can then be formulated to address these issues. For instance, if the organisation does a significant amount of trade in pounds or euros and extreme forex volatility can have a major impact on the profitability of the organisation, forex hedging to mitigate these risks may be needed.

 

• Manage & Monitor - This post-Brexit environment is a very dynamic environment where decisions made (or not made) by political leaders can dramatically change the situation. As a result, corporate leaders must remain flexible and agile to adapt to the changes, that may be coming ahead.

 

To prepare for the worst case scenarios, corporate leaders will have to do some scenario planning and analysis of the various Brexit impact on their corporate activities. Subsequently, a relevant Brexit strategy will have to be formulated and executed. Leaders should also note that the environment is constantly changing; hence the strategy needs to be very flexible so that it can be modified as and when needed.

 

Last but not least, as in any change management exercise, constant communication to internal and external stakeholders is absolutely critical for the success of the strategy.