The Hormuz impact on Leadership.

This year, the Strait of Hormuz, the most important route in our region closed, and global trade still had its best half-year in fifteen years.

Read that twice. DHL’s latest Globalization Tracker shows goods trade accelerating despite the Strait of Hormuz closure and US tariffs at levels not seen in decades. Businesses found new routes. Countries signed new agreements instead of retaliating. Here in the UAE we felt it. Painful, but not a collapse.

Then the WTO’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala added the line every leader should sit with: some of these detours will stay.

In The Maestro CEO, I write that strategy is the sheet music, but markets are jazz. I once watched a twelve-month roadmap become irrelevant in four weeks. The team didn’t panic because the competitor was better. They panicked because they had poured their hearts into a score that no longer existed.

What saved us was not a better plan. It was knowing the difference between the melody and the arrangement. The melody was our purpose and our customers. The route to get there was only ever an arrangement.

So this week I’m asking my team the question I trust most in moments like this: which of our assumptions stopped being true?

Not “when will things go back to normal?” Normal was just the last song we played.

The leaders who will own the next decade are not waiting for the old route to reopen. They are already playing the next phrase, with conviction.

Real leadership isn't about words, it's about action and owning the future. Look at the UAE: thanks to the bold vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the nation stands resilient through every challenge. The environment for success has already been built for you. Now, it's your turn. Leave the past behind, embrace today as day one, and start building your own future.