Business Quarter Issue 3 is now live.
This edition arrives in a tougher climate for decision-makers. Planning cycles feel less reliable, technology demands are intensifying, and leaders are being asked to move quickly without losing judgement. That pressure runs through the new issue, which is built around a simple but timely proposition: the businesses that stand out now will not be the noisiest. They will be the ones using technology with discipline, keeping people in the frame, and making better decisions under strain.
The centrepiece is our Big Issue, Navigating a state of uncertainty, which examines how companies are planning for FY2026 when the variables no longer move neatly on their own. Geopolitics, energy, inflation expectations, rates, trade friction, labour costs, and weak confidence are overlapping, rather than arriving one at a time. That changes the nature of planning. The question is no longer whether uncertainty will pass, but how businesses reduce avoidable friction, stay flexible, and keep operating when certainty itself has become a scarcer input.
That same pressure appears elsewhere in the issue, in forms that will feel familiar to many leadership teams. In Avoiding the marketing doom loop, Jon Butler looks at what happens when short-term performance pressure starts cannibalising future demand.
In The great stay & the hidden risks, Robert Lucido examines a quieter workforce problem: the false comfort of lower attrition when stability is driven by caution, not commitment. And in Rethinking leadership in the age of AI, the focus shifts from hype to management reality — how leaders build trust, protect culture, and use technology to strengthen judgement rather than flatten it.
The issue’s leadership profile with Jesper With-Fogstrup, CEO of Moneypenny, carries that argument into practice. It is a grounded look at how a growing business can use AI to remove friction while keeping service, transparency, and culture intact.
That is followed by a run of leadership spotlights and our inaugural BQ Leader’s List 2026, which tracks ten figures shaping business with a blend of ambition, operational clarity, and resilience. Together, those pieces are less interested in personality than in method: how leaders make decisions, scale responsibly, and hold their nerve in noisier markets.
Issue 3 is live now here. For readers working through planning pressure, AI adoption, workforce complexity, and the harder edge of growth in 2026, it is ready to read.
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