Picture two vessels setting out today.
The first enters a fjord: deep water, sheer walls, one clear channel. Navigation is simple because there’s only one way to go. The crew can be lean, the charts are basic, and progress is fast.
The second enters a tidal marsh. Channels braid and split, and the tide redraws the map twice a day. A route that worked this morning is a mudflat by the afternoon. Progress is typically slower, and the crew needs people who can read the water.
Offered the choice, most would pick the fjord. Indeed, in my experience, many organisations already have, without quite noticing.
The fjord is efficient, until it isn’t
A fjord workforce is built for one route. Roles are tightly defined, skills match today’s processes, and development means getting better at the current channel. It’s efficient, and it looks good on this year’s (and maybe next year’s) dashboard.
The risk is at the head of the fjord, when the channel ends. In a business sense, that’s a new regulation kicking in, a new technology, or a market shift, and there are no options to deviate available. The only way out is to turn around: restructures, redundancies, rehiring at a premium… In essence, change happens to you.
Pierre Wack, who pioneered scenario planning at Shell, saw this pattern and he argued that failing to see a new reality due to outdated assumptions is a common cause of strategic failure, particularly in large, well-run companies.
Dave Snowden and Mary Boone make a related point in their HBR article on the Cynefin framework: The clear, predictable domain sits right next to chaos, and the most frequent collapses into chaos happen because success has bred complacency. The channel has always been clear, right up until it isn’t.
The marsh rewards people who can read the water
A marsh workforce is built to adapt and not because it has a better plan; rather, it has people who can sense which way the channels are shifting and adjust before they’re stranded.
That ability can’t be bought when the tide turns. It’s built over years: through stretch assignments, exposure to ambiguity, and leaders who have learned to notice faint signals before they become obvious ones. It’s the ‘tough jobs’ that I reference in my earlier blogs, and it’s slow to grow.
The tide is already moving
In the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, employers expected 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. That’s your five-year horizon: roughly four in ten of today’s capabilities shifting underneath you.
For many employers, the shallow waters where navigators learn are also drying up. In a 2025 IDC survey of more than 5,500 business leaders across 22 markets, two-thirds said they expect to slow entry-level hiring over the next three years. Employers don’t all agree, and some surveys point the other way, but the risk is clear to see: fewer people starting in the shallows today means fewer people who can read the marsh in 2032.
Look five years out without pretending to predict
Wack’s scenario work aimed to build what he called “prepared minds”: leaders able to recognise a major shift when it arrived. Shell’s planners had explored the possibility of an oil shock before 1973, and the company was better prepared for it than it might otherwise have been. Historians still debate how much credit scenario planning deserves. The principle stands either way.
Try it with your workforce. Picture 2032 and ask:
Which core roles assume that today’s work will still be there?
Who can read changing environments now, and how many of them will we have in five years?
Where are people getting experience of ambiguity, and is AI or restructuring quietly removing it?
If the largest contract is at risk tomorrow, would we adapt or turn back?
If most of your answers point to the fjord, it’s not necessarily a failure; it’s a choice, so make it deliberate and budget for the turnaround.
Where Plexity fits
Plexity works where business acumen and people performance meet. I sit independently on the buyer’s side, with no product to sell. I help executives chart the water five years out: where capability investment keeps you efficient in the fjord, and where it builds the navigators you’ll need in the marsh.
Coming next: Why waiting for everyone to agree keeps you in the fjord.
References
IDC. (2025). AI at work: The role of AI in the global workforce [InfoBrief commissioned by Deel]. International Data Corporation.
Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision making. Harvard Business Review, 85(11), 68–76.
Wack, P. (1985, September). Scenarios: Uncharted waters ahead. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1985/09/scenarios-uncharted-waters-ahead
World Economic Forum. (2025). The future of jobs report 2025. https://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_Report_2025.pdf