Perspectives

Our point of view on the work we do and the world we encounter.

Observations, opinions, and analysis from Polar Insight, drawn from work in complex, regulated environments.

20 October 2026

European Business Wants More Development Spending, Not Less

A new Polar Insight survey of 536 European business leaders shows a clear majority want the EU to increase, not cut, its development cooperation budget, and they frame it explicitly as a commercial interest. For financial services leaders tracking the next Multiannual Financial Framework, this is a signal that the political consensus assumed in Brussels may be out of step with the people who actually run European companies.

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22 September 2026

Physical Proximity Is the Most Underused Tool Against Polarisation

Bringing opposing stakeholders into the same physical room consistently reduces the intensity of disagreement without asking anyone to abandon their position. For financial services leaders managing fractured boards, restive shareholders, and divided workforces, this is a practical instrument that has been quietly discarded.

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18 August 2026Third-party riskBoard accountabilityOperational resilienceStakeholder dynamicsRegulation

The External Dependencies Boards Discover Too Late

Authorisation, contracts and longstanding relationships create a persuasive sense of control over intermediaries. They tell a board much less than it may assume about what will happen to customers, complaints, redress, distribution or reputation when one of those intermediaries fails. That gap between the internal dependency map and external reality is where many recent incidents may be lurking unseen.

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5 August 2026JudgementPreparednessUncertaintyDecision Confidence

Preparedness Is a Judgement Problem Before It Is a Capability Problem

Every claim of preparedness rests on judgements made long before a shock arrives, and those judgements deteriorate quietly inside capable institutions. Senior leaders in financial services and other complex, regulated sectors should treat the quality of judgement itself as a preparedness capability, not an assumed input.

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3 August 2026Decision MakingStrategic LeadershipExecutive ClarityCognitive Biases

The Distortions That Sit Between Your Boardroom and Reality

Most poor decisions at the top of financial services firms are not caused by bad information, but by predictable distortions in how that information is processed. Senior leaders who fail to account for cognitive bias, physical depletion, team dynamics and untested organisational assumptions are, in effect, flying with a broken instrument panel.

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6 July 2026Stakeholder ManagementDecision Making

Stakeholder Management Is Broken. It Was Built for a Slower World.

The dominant model of stakeholder management treats stakeholders as audiences to be informed after the fact, when in reality they now shape decisions before they are made. Senior leaders who fail to close the proximity gap will keep discovering their choices have been overruled by the time they announce them.

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28 June 2026

Research Integrity in Stakeholder Intelligence Work

In 2026, the explosion of AI-generated research has made provenance, method, and intellectual honesty the deciding factors in whether stakeholder insight is worth acting on. Senior leaders who cannot tell sound research from confident-sounding output will make decisions on foundations that look solid and are not.

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26 June 2026Stakeholder DynamicsGeopolitics

The Hormuz Crisis Exposed Who Boards Were Not Talking To - Reviewing The Crisis As We Enter H2 2026

The H1 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis was not a geopolitical surprise; it was a stakeholder intelligence failure. Boards that relied on internal models and familiar political contacts missed the underwriters, regulators, and alternative operators who actually determined how the shock played out.

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25 June 2026Radical uncertaintyDecision makingFinancial services

Radical Uncertainty Is a Social Problem, Not a Statistical One

When the future cannot be reduced to probabilities, the quality of a decision depends less on modelling and more on the conversations a leader is willing to have. Senior executives in financial services who treat uncertainty as a private analytical task, rather than a collective sense-making one, are systematically under-equipping themselves.

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24 June 2026False ConfidenceDecision Making in UncertaintyConfirmation Bias

The Coming Surge in False Confidence

AI is becoming the most efficient bias-reinforcement engine ever built, and the people most exposed are those whose judgement carries the highest consequence. Senior leaders in financial services should expect a measurable rise in confidently wrong decisions over the next eighteen months, and prepare accordingly.

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