Adaptive supply chains: a test of business leadership 

Supply chain planning has grown harder to hold steady. Patterns that once worked in familiar cycles now move with little notice, and the assumptions businesses rely on around cost, capacity and demand need revisiting far more often than most systems were built to handle. 

 

This instability rarely stays contained within logistics and often influences planning, finance and delivery across the organisation. Tariff changes are moving through margins in unpredictable ways, while new sustainability disclosure rules, including the UK’s move toward ISSB alignment, are set to draw logistics deeper into financial reporting and investor scrutiny.  

 

Market sentiment reflects a similar reality. The UK Logistics Confidence Index has fallen to 40.4, its lowest reading since the measure began, showing a sector working with reduced visibility into cost and capacity, and a narrowing margin for error when plans go wrong. 

 

As these forces converge, they are tightening the window in which a plan remains reliable, testing how well businesses can adapt when the assumptions beneath it no longer hold. That is increasingly a test of leadership behaviour, not just system capability.

 

 

The limits of static systems 

The strength of many logistics systems lies in the framework they were built to maintain. They organise routes, carriers and costs around established rules, and keep day-to-day operations consistent. 

 

That process becomes limited when assumptions about viable routes, expected costs or available capacity need revisiting more often than rules were designed to handle. 

 

For example, when a tariff change alters the economics of a route, most platforms continue to follow the existing plan until someone intervenes. Weather or capacity shortages can unsettle several markets before teams update schedules. 

 

Pressure therefore accumulates at the point of decision. Planners rely on manual judgement to bridge gaps between the plan and what the network is actually doing, often with incomplete information or limited time. Leaders then inherit outcomes that teams struggle to trace back to a clear set of choices, especially when conditions shift mid-cycle. 

 

The challenge deepens as reporting expectations rise, with the UK preparing to align with ISSB standards and regulators expected to rely more heavily on logistics data in financial and climate disclosures. 

 

Static systems can record activity, but they struggle to explain as to why a decision changed or what triggered a deviation from the original plan. Without that context, finance, operations and compliance teams can develop different interpretations of the same events. 

 

Over time, these limitations make it harder for organisations to connect what happened with why it happened, even as that connection becomes central to business performance and regulatory oversight. The tension this creates is already visible in how teams make everyday planning decisions. 

 

 

How agentic systems elevate planning 

The move toward adaptive planning is already showing up inside operations, often in small shifts before it becomes a formal strategy. Teams are relying less on static rules and more on information that reflects what is happening in the network at that moment. 

 

Agentic systems sit beneath that shift, using logistics AI to keep planners working with live options rather than assumptions set months earlier. 

 

What makes these systems different is how they read the network. Tariffs, weather, capacity, demand and service performance are no longer viewed in isolation. They are tested together against the commercial and regulatory boundaries set by leadership, which produces choices that reflect real conditions. 

 

The benefits tend to emerge in daily work before they appear on dashboards. ETA accuracy improves, which steadies staffing and stock decisions. Volume can move to alternative carriers when capacity tightens. Vehicle fill rates rise as empty miles are reduced. 

 

Another change is the clarity around why decisions move. Each adjustment carries its own rationale, linked to tariff exposure, service reliability or sustainability requirements. Teams no longer have to reconstruct a decision after the fact, and auditability becomes part of the flow rather than an added task. 

 

Planners remain at the centre of all this. While systems surface what is possible, human judgement still decides what is appropriate. That balance is becoming essential in an environment where conditions shift fast enough to require flexibility without sacrificing control. 

 

 

Logistics leadership in 2026 

Across boardrooms, expectations are adjusting to this new rhythm of supply chains. Leaders are being judged not only on how well they respond to external shocks but on how clearly they can show the reasoning behind those responses. Investors and regulators both want visibility, and customers ultimately feel the effect through the consistency of service. 

 

Keeping pace with those expectations depends on how well daily decisions express the organisation’s strategy. The parameters that shape routing, fulfilment and carrier choice now carry more strategic weight and need more frequent review. Annual plans remain important, but they sit within a cycle of regular adjustment that requires clarity over what changed and why. 

 

Agentic and adaptive systems support that shift by keeping decision-making grounded in what the network is experiencing in real time. As volatility becomes a stable feature of the environment, the ability to update plans while keeping decisions transparent is becoming one of the clearest signals of organisational resilience. 

 

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Nishith Rastogi is CEO and Founder at Locus 

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and B4LLS