Henry-Paul Potgieter
Jan 22, 2026
Scenario planning for disruption: Hiring the teams who can execute under pressure
If you work in Procurement, Supply Chain, Logistics, Freight, or commercial Sales, you’ve probably noticed something: disruption isn’t an “exception” anymore, it’s part of the operating environment.
And this week’s conversations at Davos have only reinforced that point. With global leaders focusing on economic resilience, trade stability, and accelerating risk, from climate volatility to shifting global relationships, supply chain disruption is no longer viewed as an operational headache. It’s being treated as a strategic business issue that directly impacts revenue, customer trust, and competitiveness.
What’s changed is the pace. The world can feel stable one week and uncertain the next, and supply chains are often the first place that uncertainty shows up: capacity tightens, lead times swing, costs jump, and “normal” assumptions stop holding.
At CAST USA, we’re seeing organizations respond by taking scenario planning more seriously, and pairing it with smarter hiring decisions. Because when disruption hits, the difference isn’t just the plan you have on paper. It’s whether you’ve built a team with the decision-making speed, agility, and systems-level thinking to execute that plan in real time.
Below, we’re focusing on three disruption forces shaping how organizations plan (and how they hire) right now.
1. Federal budget uncertainty: The “later in the year” risk that still changes planning
Even if a federal budget isn’t imminent today, the reality is the federal shutdown conversation is now more of a “later in the year” risk, not a problem that’s fully off the table.
For supply chains, that matters because planning cycles don’t pause. Inventory positioning, import scheduling, compliance readiness, and freight capacity decisions all happen months in advance. When there’s a funding and policy decision point sitting out on the horizon, it creates a familiar operational challenge: uncertainty you can’t ignore, but can’t fully plan around either.
Where disruption shows up
If political negotiations tighten later in the year, the risk isn’t always that everything stops. More often, the impact shows up as reduced responsiveness and slower exception-handling across critical touchpoints, including:
- Customs and border processes, particularly where shipments require additional review, holds, or coordination
- Regulatory oversight and enforcement variability, creating more gray areas for compliance teams
- Transport permitting and approvals, which can slow down specialized moves and project freight
- Decision delays, where timelines and guidance become harder to predict
The operational pain usually isn’t in the “normal flow.” It’s in the exceptions - the shipments that get held, flagged, or delayed and then trigger downstream disruption.
Talent implication
This environment increases demand for leaders who can balance operational performance with scenario planning, and who can act decisively without creating avoidable compliance or cost risk.
2. Geopolitical pressure: Port closures, retaliatory tariffs, and trade lane volatility
Geopolitical shocks are no longer “black swans.” They’re recurring operational realities: port disruption, shifting trade lanes, retaliatory tariffs, sanctions risk, and supplier-country concentration challenges.
The Richmond Fed has highlighted how shocks can be amplified through supply chain networks, reinforcing why resilience isn’t just a cost question, it’s a performance and continuity issue.
What we’re seeing
Across Procurement, Logistics, and broader Supply Chain functions, geopolitical pressure is driving:
- Procurement teams re-checking supplier geographic exposure and dependency
- Greater collaboration between trade compliance, sourcing, and finance (instead of operating in silos)
- Logistics teams building “decision trees” for lane disruption
- Sales and customer-facing teams adjusting commercial commitments based on realistic lead-time risk
And importantly: tariffs aren’t just a trade compliance issue anymore. They shape landed cost, order strategy, customer pricing, margin, and supply continuity - all at once.
Richmond Fed research has also published recent work exploring tariff impacts and proposals, reflecting how trade policy changes remain a live variable for planning.
Talent implication
The market is increasingly rewarding professionals who can interpret trade disruption as an operating model issue, not just a spreadsheet issue. Employers want systems thinkers who understand how one change breaks five downstream processes.
3. Severe weather risk: Especially in the Southeast - disruption has a season
Severe weather is one of the most predictable disruptors, which makes it even more frustrating when organizations still get caught flat-footed.
The Southeast continues to face major weather-related exposure, from hurricanes to flash flooding and storm-driven port and carrier constraints. That risk extends well beyond a single facility:
- Strained supplier networks get
- Freight lanes tighten
- Delivery schedules slip
- Warehouse capacity becomes uneven
- Recovery sequencing becomes the real battle
The organizations that handle weather disruption well don’t just have a contingency plan, they have a decision framework that’s been tested, trained, and updated.
What “real” contingency planning looks like
The best teams pressure-test scenarios that are uncomfortable but realistic:
- “What if a key facility is down for 10 days?” (not 24 hours)
- “What if two critical suppliers go offline at the same time?”
- “What if fuel constraints and driver availability tighten together?”
- “What if we temporarily lose visibility tools during peak disruption?”
This is where scenario planning becomes a real operational discipline, not just a PowerPoint.
Research into supply networks reinforces that resilience often comes from the ability to adapt quickly within existing networks, such as substituting inputs or reconfiguring flows, rather than trying to rebuild during the crisis.
Talent implication
Companies want leaders who can move beyond “we should have a backup” to real execution playbooks - tested in advance, with clear owners and escalation triggers.
Recruitment Reality: Disruption Has Changed What “Good” Looks Like
At CAST USA, we’ve seen a clear shift in hiring profiles across Procurement, Supply Chain, Logistics, Freight, and commercial roles. It’s no longer enough to have technical expertise and steady-state optimization experience.
Organizations want professionals who can operate in dynamic conditions, where decision speed and coordination matter just as much as savings targets.
Crisis-ready leadership skills are top hiring priorities
The organizations that recover fastest from disruptions usually have something in common:They make decisions earlier, communicate clearly, and adjust with control rather than chaos.
The top skills we’re seeing clients hire for include:
- Rapid decision-making with incomplete information
- Adaptability without losing discipline or structure
- Systems thinking (upstream/downstream impacts, constraint awareness)
- Strong cross-functional influence across finance, operations, sales, and external partners
- Scenario playbook ownership, not just “risk awareness”
- High-confidence stakeholder communication during disruption events
That shift aligns with modern supply chain disruption research, which increasingly frames risk as a system-level challenge - where coordination and network behavior drive outcomes.
Contract roles in continuity planning are increasing
Another major change: more companies are using interim talent to build or strengthen disruption readiness. Contract hires are increasingly including:
- Business continuity / resilience project leads
- Procurement surge support for alternate sourcing events
- Trade compliance specialists during policy shifts
- Logistics network optimization resources
- Project-based S&OP recovery leads
- Data/visibility analysts for disruption monitoring and control towers
Why the shift? Disruption creates workload spikes that most teams can’t absorb without breaking something else (service levels, compliance, team health, or customer experience).
Contract hiring brings speed and targeted expertise, without waiting for full headcount cycles to catch up.
Cross-training and succession planning are now “must-haves,” not HR extras
If your resilience strategy depends on “one person who knows how to do that,” you don’t have resilience, you simply have a single point of failure.
More companies are building hiring and workforce plans around:
- Cross-training across connected functions
- Documented playbooks so processes aren’t trapped in one person’s head
- Succession planning for critical operational roles
- "Bench strength” hiring - adding capability earlier rather than reacting after disruption hits
What companies should be doing now (before the next shock)
If you’re building a 2026-ready workforce plan, scenario planning should be paired with talent planning. You need plans, and you need people who can run those plans in real time.
That means hiring and developing:
- Leaders who can make fast decisions with imperfect information
- Teams that flex across functions
- Interim capability for continuity planning and response projects
- Succession coverage for roles that keep freight, supply, and compliance moving
Disruption is here - build your team to handle it
Geopolitical shocks, severe weather events, and ongoing policy uncertainty are reminders that supply chains don’t break because companies didn’t care, they break because the organization didn’t have the right capability in place to respond fast enough.
As a specialist recruitment partner, we support organizations hiring Procurement, Supply Chain, Logistics, Freight, and Sales talent that keeps operations stable when conditions aren’t.
So, ask yourself:
