THE BRIEF #028 THE BLIND SPOT OF PREDICTION: WHY FORESIGHT IS THE REAL STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE

IN BRIEF

On October 25, 2026, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva secured an unprecedented fourth term as Brazil's president, defeating Flávio Bolsonaro in the runoff with 51.8% of the vote. The result stunned analysts: just a week earlier, many prominent newspapers were forecasting a "career-ending defeat" for Lula. By Monday morning, newspapers were writing about how the veteran leader had turned his election fortunes around in three weeks. Bolsonaro was considered a strong favorite to win the presidency in part because no one had ever come back from being behind in the first round since 1989.

Financial markets were also caught unprepared. In the weeks leading up to the runoff, Brazilian assets had risen on expectations that Bolsonaro's more business-friendly agenda would prevail. With Lula's victory confirmed, the impact was immediate. The Brazilian real fell 8% against the dollar, marking its steepest single-day decline since 1999, as investors reacted to uncertainty over fiscal policy under Lula's new government.

Lula's victory also disrupted a broader regional pattern. Across Latin America, right-leaning candidates had been gaining ground in recent electoral cycles, a trend that aligned with Washington's push for greater influence in the region. Bolsonaro had positioned himself as a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump and pledged to deepen bilateral ties with the White House. Lula, by contrast, has been openly critical of Trump's foreign policy stance.

THE GIST

The Brazilian election result is not the first that defies polls and it illustrate a deeper point: prediction and anticipation are fundamentally different activities. Prediction asks: what will happen? It seeks a single answer and is judged by whether that answer turns out to be correct. Anticipation asks a different question: what could happen, and how should we prepare? It is not about being right; it is about being ready. This is the essence of foresight: not predicting the future, but preparing for a range of plausible futures.

One of the most compelling historical examples of foresight in action comes from Royal Dutch Shell. In the early 1970s, Shell's scenario planning team constructed narratives exploring the possibility of a dramatic spike in oil prices, a prospect most executives believed was far-fetched. The goal was never to predict the future, but to reshape how decision-makers thought and planned when confronted with uncertainty. One key finding was that the Gulf States were becoming the most influential players in global oil supply, which meant the market could shift from favoring buyers to favoring sellers. In that scenario, the price and availability of oil would no longer depend solely on reserves and drilling techniques, but on the political decisions of producing countries.

Shell's leadership began asking a practical question: if these scenarios materialized, what should the company be doing differently right now? Rather than concentrating resources on a single bet about future oil prices, they diversified their investments across different types of oil reserves and geographies, and built operational flexibility so the company could pivot quickly if market conditions changed. By embedding these hypotheses into their strategic planning, Shell became more agile and better equipped to handle disruption. The team did not predict the 1973 oil crisis, but when oil prices quadrupled from $2.90 to $11.65 per barrel, Shell was the only major oil company that was ready. While rivals scrambled and suffered massive losses, Shell turned the crisis into significant profits.

THE TAKEAWAY

The lesson from Brazil, and from Shell, is not that polls or forecasts are worthless, but that over-reliance on prediction creates a dangerous blind spot. When we treat the most likely outcome as the only outcome worth preparing for, we leave ourselves vulnerable to surprise.

Foresight recognizes that the future is not a single point to be guessed at, but a space of possibilities to be navigated. Its value lies not in the accuracy of any one scenario, but in the quality of thinking and preparation it produces across all of them. The U.S. midterm elections and the Spanish general elections, among others, are both fast approaching. The invitation is clear: rather than anchoring to the latest poll, invest in mapping the range of plausible outcomes and prepare for each of them.

In an era of compounding disruptions, the ability to anticipate, rather than merely react, is becoming one of the most important strategic capabilities of our time. Nearly nineteen centuries ago, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations: "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." Foresight begins there: not in trying to predict the future (which is almost always beyond your control), but in cultivating a mindset that embraces uncertainty and prepares for it.

DELVE DEEPER  

• Robyn Bolton – Two Strategic Foresight Success Stories. One Secret to Success - Mile Zero (June 25, 2025). 
• Geoff Dyer, Michael Pooler and Beatriz Langella – How Lula turned his election fortunes around in three weeks (October 26, 2026).
• Amy Webb – How true strategic foresight can help companies survive and thrive (January 31, 2024).