Even major logistics players found themselves scrambling when the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—a vital artery for over a third of the world’s crude oil—severely throttled global trade. Isabelle Massad, CFO of DSV, noted that while her firm had proactively modeled various geopolitical risks, the sheer timing of the disruption caught them off guard. Rather than relying on a perfect roadmap, the company focused on maintaining operational and financial agility, treating constant logistics turbulence as a permanent fixture of modern business planning rather than an anomaly.

The sentiment of surprise was echoed by Jagdish Parulekar, CFO of Al Habtoor Motors, who admitted that the intensity of the shipping lane closures exceeded initial projections. He emphasized that the crisis required a steep learning curve, forcing leadership to pivot quickly to secure alternative routes under strict directives from the CEO. Ultimately, these organizations discovered that while pre-planned contingencies are valuable, the ability to rapidly assess a situation and innovate on the fly is what truly determines a company’s survival during large-scale global instability.