The HC Commodities Podcast

Episode: Planning for the Unplannable with Savvas Manousos

Host: Paul Chapman (HC Group)
Guest: Savvas Manousos (Partner, Enco Insights)
Date: September 9, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode tackles the perennial—and now existential—challenge of business planning and budgeting in the commodity sector, focusing on a world that is increasingly unpredictable. Host Paul Chapman invites Savvas Manousos, a long-time trading executive and partner at advisory firm Enco Insights, to discuss the limitations of traditional planning, the difference between strategy and annual cycles, and how organizations can build genuine resilience and flexibility amidst shocks from geopolitics, economics, and policy. Together, they explore practical and philosophical aspects of planning for uncertainty, including structural and cultural changes needed to replace “rituals with readiness.”

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Limitations of Traditional Business Planning

• Static Planning vs. Reality

  • Many firms cling to planning methods rooted in static, steady-state assumptions, even though “the world’s running on uncertainty” ([03:11]).
  • Traditional approaches—annual budgets, fixed strategies—do not match the cadence or magnitude of today’s geopolitical and economic shocks.
  • Quote:

    "Last year's strategy and last year's budget become this year's blind spot. Static plans meet a world that's very dynamic and it ends up that C suites and businesses are forced to manage volatility only with the tools that they have, which were designed around a very stable linear world." — Savvas Manousos [05:17]

• Strategy Is Not the Annual Plan

  • Budgets and annual planning cycles are not strategy; true strategy is a long-term “plan to win,” typically based on distinctive competitive advantages (e.g., low cost, customer service, design/engineering).
  • Frequent strategy changes may reveal the absence of a real strategy.
  • Quote:

    "If your strategy is changing every couple of years, you don't have one. Your strategy is your plan to win." — Paul Chapman quoting Prof. Vikas Mittal [06:54]

2. Commodities’ Unique Business Planning Challenges

• Cyclicality and Volatility

  • Unlike many industries, commodity markets are strikingly cyclical and externally driven.
  • Returns can swing from bust to boom over multiyear periods due to exogenous events, capex mismatches, and unpredictable shocks ([13:23]).
  • Short-term underperformance often leads to misplaced shifts in focus (e.g., from trading to value-add activities and back), driven by stakeholder impatience.

• Pitfalls of “Tyranny of the Budget”

  • Organizations often extrapolate from last year’s results and overreact to underperformance—potentially dropping capabilities that would prove valuable in the next upturn.
  • Quote:

    "The temptation is to salami, slice it from your portfolio... you end up with something very, very small but perfectly formed rather than something that maybe a bit rougher, but in portfolio terms is actually much more consistent." — Savvas Manousos [24:03]

3. Building Resiliency and Flexibility into Planning

• Replace Rituals with Readiness

  • The need is to replace periodic planning “rituals” with processes and mindsets built for dynamic readiness. Plans should be living, rolling, and option-rich rather than fixed and annual ([06:38], [26:37]).

• Organizational Tools for Agility

  • Cross-functional Resilience Cells:
    Small, empowered teams cutting across trading, logistics, treasury, legal, etc., with real resource-allocation and decision rights on a frequent cadence.
    • Quote:

      "You form a cross functional resilience cell... and you set up a weekly, monthly, whatever the right cadence is, decision forum with resource allocation rights and authority to be able to trigger and fast track options." — Savvas Manousos [28:11]

  • War Games & Red Teams:
    Regularly simulate scenarios by roleplaying competitors, governments, or others to stress-test assumptions and unlock tacit organizational expertise ([30:48]).

    "It's about unlocking the intrinsic expertise that already exists within the organization. It's just not codified." — Savvas Manousos [31:09]

  • Rolling Forecasts with Built-in Optionality:
    Replace static budgets with rolling forecasts and a set of “options in the hopper” that can be executed as needed, increasing agility ([34:08]).

• Shifting the Planning Cycle

  • Move away from budgeting as a backward-looking, extrapolative exercise.
  • Elevate scenario and customer-led stress tests over internal dashboard KPIs alone ([18:57]).

4. Leadership, Accountability & Organizational Culture

• Avoiding Blanket Contingency & Maintaining Accountability

  • Flexibility must not devolve into a culture where all results are excused by exogenous factors ([38:58]).
  • The answer: foster an ownership mindset—a culture where everyone is a partner/owner, and success is evaluated (and compensated) relative to risk, market opportunity, and collective performance.
  • Quote:

    "You'll continue to have that kind of dialogue until you change the mindset... to that of an ownership mindset. Everyone becomes a partner, everyone becomes an owner in the business." — Savvas Manousos [39:59]

• Incentives and Integration

  • The “star trader” incentive model can clash with asset-backed, longer-horizon approaches; these tensions need careful management ([44:55]).
  • Public vs. private companies handle these challenges differently; actual partnership or equity stakes help align long-term vision ([44:55], [45:41]).

• Avoiding Paralysis Amid Volatility

  • Another risk is freezing up (‘paralysis’) in the face of too much uncertainty ([47:09]).
  • The solution: set “option pools” with pre-approved capital and defined strategic thresholds for deployment; empower teams to act within strategic and risk guardrails.
  • Quote:

    "It's removed that ritual of an annual process and it's replaced it with a resilience which is I'm going to respond to what I see going on right now and I have a readiness and an agility to execute." — Savvas Manousos [48:53]

• Importance of Scale and Partnerships

  • Robustness and flexibility are easier with scale—hence the drive among large strategics to expand trading and commercial capabilities ([51:13]).
  • When scale is lacking, partnerships, asset-light models, or local JVs may provide the needed flexibility ([51:38]).

5. Leadership Transition and External Advisors

• Leadership Gap
  • The industry faces a coming shortage of mid-level and senior commodity professionals, leading to increased reliance on experienced external advisors ([54:33]).
  • True advisory value lies in facilitating a client’s own insight and readiness, not handing down “slide decks.” The goal: enable clients to be self-sufficient.
  • Quote:

    "Resilience isn't something that you buy... you have to build it by what you do." — Savvas Manousos [37:39]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Replacing rituals with readiness.” — Savvas Manousos [03:11]
• "Strategy is your plan to win based on your competitive advantages that you have." — Paul Chapman [15:53]
• "The market will give you feedback on how well or badly you’re doing... looking at the numbers over a slightly longer time period is, is more helpful just because it helps strip out some of the noise." — Savvas Manousos [16:51]
• "Conflict, climate, volatility, they're always permanent features, not anomalies." — Savvas Manousos [27:06]
• "You can compress that learning curve within organizations by bringing advisors, coaches, insight partners, thought partners who’ve lived it and can share some of their perspectives—but are there very much to coach and support the teams grow and accelerate..." — Savvas Manousos [37:39]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:11] — Limitations of static planning in commodities
• [06:54] — Strategy vs. annual planning; “plan to win” concept
• [13:23] — Cyclical reality and leadership challenges for commodities
• [21:33] — Annual budgets and their misalignment with commodities volatility
• [26:37] — Mindset shift: resilience and flexibility
• [28:11] — Cross-functional resilience cells
• [30:48] — War games and red teaming
• [34:08] — Rolling forecasts with optionality
• [38:58] — Avoiding contingency culture and maintaining accountability
• [44:55] — Integrating star trader talent into multi-year, team-based cultures
• [47:09] — Avoiding paralysis in decision-making
• [51:13] — Scaling up resilience; structural options
• [54:33] — Leadership gap and the enabling advisory role

Final Thoughts

This episode provides a robust examination of how the reality of planning in commodities demands a shift from set-and-forget cycles to a new paradigm based on resilience, flexibility, candid assessment, teamwork, and continuous readiness. The conversation between Paul and Savvas blends high-level thought leadership with concrete tools, recommending both organizational structure change and a deep mindset shift for future-proofing commodity-related businesses.

For more information on Enco Insights or to connect with the guests, see the episode show notes.