Businesses are learning to think long term again, by Zudu CEO Paul Duffy

For the best part of a decade, long-term planning in Scottish business has felt like a luxury. Brexit, a pandemic, an energy crisis, inflation and interest rates taught us a similar lesson, essentially not to look too far ahead because events will overtake you.

Five-year plans became three-year plans, then annual budgets and, for many businesses, a rolling quarter of simply getting through it.  But something is changing.  Over the past year, I've spent a lot of time talking to business owners across Scotland, including interviewing founders and leaders with both my Zudu and Entrepreneurial Scotland hats on.

The conversation has shifted. People are mapping out five-year plans again. Proper plans involving new markets, hires, products, acquisitions and succession. Leaders increasingly seem to believe the ground beneath them is firm enough to build on.

That's not because the world has suddenly become more predictable. Quite the opposite. The pace of change is accelerating. What's different is how businesses are responding to it.  Rather than waiting for things to settle before committing, more leaders are accepting that things probably won't settle.

My own industry has operated like this for years. Software teams live with constant change. New tools, frameworks and approaches arrive continually and have to be tested against real problems before earning their place.

You quickly learn that you can't postpone your plans until the landscape stops moving. You choose a direction, review regularly and become comfortable changing the route without losing sight of the destination.

Increasingly, I'm hearing the same thinking outside of technology circles.  So, a family manufacturer considering how to grow without losing what makes it distinctive, a hospitality group planning expansion while rethinking staffing, a professional services firm preparing for the next generation of leadership.

These are growth, people and legacy stories before they are technology stories. Technology inevitably features, and increasingly so does AI. But that conversation has matured too.  Two years ago, boards were asking: "What should we be doing with AI?" Today, I'm more likely to hear: "How can this help us get where we want to be in five years?"  That's a much healthier question. It puts the business first and the technology second.

Companies are becoming less interested in chasing every new announcement and more interested in where technology earns its keep - relieving pressure on teams, improving customer service and providing better information for decisions.

Why does this matter? Because long-term planning is an expression of confidence, and confidence drives investment, recruitment and growth.

Scotland has never lacked talent or ideas. What has sometimes been missing is the appetite to commit to a longer-term vision when the immediate future feels so uncertain.

There are caveats. A five-year plan assuming the next five years will resemble the last won't survive contact with reality. Successful plans will anticipate change, incorporate flexibility and invest in people as much as systems.

But the direction is encouraging.  After years of firefighting, Scottish business owners are lifting their heads and looking towards the horizon again.

The pace of change hasn't slowed. They've simply decided to stop waiting for it.