Forrester: To Thrive Amid Volatility, Leaders Must Optimize Technology Investments, Excel At Driving Change, And Proactively Manage Risk

April 10, 2025 at 09:00 AM EDT

New Forrester research outlines key actions for business and technology leaders to navigate uncertainty and mitigate the effects of global disruptions

According to Forrester’s (Nasdaq: FORR) report, How To Thrive Through Volatility, business and technology leaders need to quickly adapt to current economic uncertainty. This year has been marked by unpredictability and volatility — new tariffs, trade wars, outages, cyberthreats, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical tensions are all contributing to global market instability. As a result, business leaders may have an impulse to pause planned initiatives and spending and wait to see how things play out. Yet with no end in sight to this volatility, leaders should double down on investing in areas that position them for future growth while proactively optimizing costs, pivoting resources, and scaling back on non-essential projects.

As competitors retreat, market opportunities will emerge for those poised to take control. For business and technology leaders to thrive through volatility and come out ahead, they will need to focus on four critical areas. These include:

Fiercely optimizing tech investments and simplifying technology. This is not the same as ruthless cost cutting, which, when done reactively, often undermines long-term value. Instead, it’s about identifying opportunities to streamline — such as eliminating redundant software and renegotiating to drive greater efficiency and savings. It’s also about reprioritizing — not pausing — modernization plans to be more nimble, secure, and prepared to make the best use of AI and other game-changing technologies.

Reaffirming brand value and prioritizing customers. Understanding and prioritizing which customer segments to serve will help leaders adjust their brand’s value proposition to reflect volatility shifts.

Excelling at leading change. To successfully adapt to volatility, leaders must provide confidence and clarity to their organizations. Along with building bidirectional listening strategies and communicating transparently to employees, leaders should cultivate a culture of continuous learning and upskilling.

Proactively managing risk. More than 40% of business and technology leaders cite economic uncertainty as the systemic risk that they are the most concerned about. While leaders can’t stop volatility from happening, they can manage it by taking a continuous, holistic approach to risk. Forrester recommends managing three sources of risk — enterprise risks tied to their strategy and factors fully within their control; ecosystem risks they can partially control arising from third-party relationships; and external risks they can’t control, including tariffs — and creating scenario plans for addressing each risk type.

“Five years after the pandemic, the business world, in many ways, feels even more tumultuous and unpredictable,” said Sharyn Leaver, chief research officer at Forrester. “Unlike five years ago, when the source of the disruption was a single, unknown pathogen, today’s volatility comes from a myriad of forces beyond leaders’ control. Yet there is opportunity in disruption — even in times like these. By taking charge and refocusing on tech resource and spend optimization, change leadership, and risk management, leaders can prevail where their competitors can’t — unlocking new areas for innovation and growth.”

Resources:

Read Forrester’s report, “How To Thrive Through Volatility,” to navigate this uncertainty.
Learn more about how B2B, consumer, CX, digital, security and risk, and technology leaders can thrive in volatile times.

About Forrester

Forrester (Nasdaq: FORR) is one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world. We empower leaders in technology, customer experience, digital, marketing, sales, and product functions to be bold at work and accelerate growth through customer obsession. Our unique research and continuous guidance model helps executives and their teams achieve their initiatives and outcomes faster and with confidence. To learn more, visit Forrester.com.