Today's plan may already contain commitments the business will struggle to meet.
Richard Clissold-Vasey | Strategic Adviser on Climate-Integrated Business Performance
Climate, energy and resource pressures are already changing costs, supply reliability, how assets perform and what customers buy. These changes reach the P&L through decisions being made now, in budgets, investment cases, supplier contracts, operating plans and the customer commitments.
When a plan rests on conditions that no longer hold, the consequence arrives later as a missed target, an investment that underperforms or a supplier contract that costs more than budgeted. By then your capital and management attention are committed. Competitors who saw the change and opportunities earlier may already be acting.
I help leadership teams test whether these pressures are changing the assumptions behind a live business plan, investment case or supplier commitment. The aim is to identify material exposure and opportunities while the decision can still change.
The Business Plan Pressure Diagnostic is a focused review, usually four weeks, that connects evidence held across the business and sets out what should change in the decision, planning or governance.
WORKED EXAMPLE
How drought reaches the business plan
An illustrative £300m UK pasta and sauces business buys its durum wheat, the wheat used for pasta, from two approved suppliers. Both source from the same Canadian growing region. The annual plan assumes wheat costs rise by 3%.
The Business Impact Chain traces that pressure from field to plan in six steps.
1 External pressure. Heat and drought hit the Canadian prairies resulting in a reduced harvest. This can happen in any year of the plan.
2 Impact path. Wheat becomes scarce and its price rises. Customer contracts fix the business’s own prices for six months.
3 Plan weakness. The plan counts two suppliers as a spread of risk, but both depend on one region. Its 3% cost assumption leaves no room for a failed harvest.
4 Performance implications. In this scenario, regional supply falls 15% and wheat prices rise 40%. Margin is squeezed for six months until prices can rise, and volumes may fall once they do.
5 Capability gap. Procurement sees suppliers. Finance sees costs. Neither checks where the wheat is grown when the plan is set.
6 Response and integration. Map critical inputs by where they are grown. Consider contracting a second growing region now, securing supply ahead of competitors and before prices move. Build a drought scenario, stock buffer and review triggers into the plan.
Illustrative scenario, not client work or a forecast.
Six questions to ask before the next sign-off
The urgency comes when someone has to put their name to a number, a contract or a choice. If any of these questions is hard to answer with confidence, the plan may rest on conditions that no longer hold.
PLAN OR BUDGET SUBMISSION
Do the growth, margin, cost and return commitments being signed off still reflect the conditions the business expects to operate in?
CAPITAL COMMITTEE OR STAGE GATE
Does the investment case hold across the life of the asset, once energy, water and climate costs are priced in?
SOURCING DECISION OR SUPPLIER REVIEW
Are cost, energy, water, yield, availability and reliability visible before the contract is locked in?
CUSTOMER CONTRACT, LAUNCH OR SERVICE PROMISE
Can the supply base, assets and operating model support the price, volume and service level being promised?
STRATEGY OR FIVE-YEAR PLAN REFRESH
Does the plan the Board will be asked to support reflect the operating environment the business is entering?
INSURANCE, REFINANCING OR ESTATE DECISION
When insurers or lenders reprice, does that feed back into asset economics, capital choices and the wider plan?
These questions test a single decision. To check the whole plan, the Business Plan Pressure Test asks five questions you can answer from what you already know, in about ten minutes. Take the Pressure Test.
BSI’s 2026 survey of 7,068 G7 business leaders found that 77% believed climate change could disrupt their supply chains, yet only one in five had undertaken climate-risk adaptation planning.
G7 Net Zero Temperature Check, BSI 2026
A focused review with practical outputs
Trace the exposure → determine what matters → design the response → mobilise delivery.
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Usually four weeks, up to six for broader scope.
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About four to six hours of sponsor time, with four to six contributors.
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An impact heatmap, leadership findings, priority changes and an outline 90-day plan.
Designed for strategy directors and senior leaders in UK-based FMCG, consumer goods, retail and asset-intensive businesses, typically above £100m revenue. Your team retains ownership of decisions and implementation.
Senior judgement, grounded in delivery
I have spent more than three decades in strategy execution, enterprise transformation and governance, in global and private equity-backed businesses. That work has shown me how businesses operate as a whole, from their economics and operations to their supply chains, investment and governance. It means I can connect evidence that usually sits in separate functions and help leaders answer the two questions that matter most. Is there a real problem here? And will the proposed fix still work once budgets, accountabilities and commercial pressure take over?
You work directly with me to connect the evidence, understand the business consequence and agree a response leaders can carry through.
"Richard is highly skilled at working with senior stakeholders across the organisation to define strategy and deliver complex, multi-stream programmes to generate better commercial outcomes."
Eve Dixon, Global Transformation Director, Kantar
The thinking behind the work
The Climate-Integrated Enterprise describes a business that builds climate, energy and resource pressures into the decisions that drive its performance. Its capabilities model helps identify what is missing.
Integrated Value Planning is the planning discipline that brings climate, energy and resource pressures into shared assumptions, capital allocation and governance. It supports the practical changes identified by the diagnostic.
Discuss a live plan or decision
Before a plan goes to the board or an investment case is approved, you need confidence that its commitments still make sense and that material opportunities are visible. Climate and resource pressures affect your competitors too. Businesses that build them into plans and operating-model decisions earlier can protect critical assets, deploy capital more effectively and pursue growth on firmer foundations.
Send me the context and the decision ahead. A first conversation can establish whether the diagnostic or another form of advisory support would be useful.
