“We used to plan for dominoes. Now we live in pinball.”

Crisis used to be sequential. One thing happened, then another. Organisations built risk models that mirrored this logic — linear, manageable, cause and effect. That world is gone.

In 2025, we face a fundamentally different challenge: not a single crisis, but a collision of them. Welcome to the Age of Polycrisis; a time when economic fragility, climate shocks, information warfare, geopolitical instability and institutional weakness overlap, amplify and metastasise.

At Oakas, we’ve spent two decades helping clients operate under pressure. And what we see today is that the old playbook simply doesn’t work.

What is a Polycrisis?

Coined in policy and academic circles, "polycrisis" describes the interwoven nature of modern threats. It’s not just multiple crises happening at once, it's how they interact in unexpected, self-reinforcing ways.

Take this common cascade:

1. A cyberattack takes a major bank offline

2. Panic spreads via social media misinformation

3. Political activists exploit the chaos with protests

4. A fragile government overcorrects with aggressive measures

5. International reputational damage follows

6. Investors pull back, compounding economic strain

This isn’t a fictional scenario. Variants of it have unfolded globally — and with increasing frequency.

Why Linear Risk Management Is Failing

Most organisational risk frameworks still assume:

• Predictable triggers

• Manageable timelines

• Clear points of escalation

• Neatly contained sectors

But today’s crises bleed across boundaries; reputational into legal, digital into physical, local into global. And linear models fail because they:

• Underestimate second- and third-order effects

• Ignore the speed of information warfare

• Assume too much time to respond

• Are designed to tick boxes, not challenge thinking

The result? Leaders are increasingly blindsided by events their risk register technically listed — but didn’t connect.

What We See Working Instead

Organisations that adapt well in this environment are doing three things:

1. Shifting from Prediction to Preparedness

You can’t forecast the exact threat. You can build muscle memory to respond to whatever arrives. This means:

• Practising scenarios that feel chaotic and overlapping

• Stress-testing assumptions, not just processes

• Getting comfortable with partial information

2. Operating Horizontally, Not Just Vertically

Silos kill crisis response. Smart organisations build cross-functional readiness:

• Communications sits alongside cyber

• Legal advises alongside operations

• External affairs works with threat intelligence

If these teams meet for the first time during a crisis, it’s already too late.

3. Rehearsing the System, Not Just the People

At Oakas, we don’t run simulations to “test the comms director.” We test:

• How the system reacts under pressure

• Where decisions bottleneck

• What breaks when timing compresses

A good simulation doesn’t just train, it reveals.

What You Can Do Next

If you’re responsible for a business, government department, NGO or multilateral function, here’s what we’d recommend:

• Stop thinking in scenarios. Start thinking in systems.

• Move from risk control to strategic agility.

• Run a simulation that feels uncomfortable and makes sure people disagree.

• Map your blind spots, especially in cross-domain interactions (e.g. media + security).

We’ve built and delivered these simulations in over 20 countries. Every team that runs one walks away sharper.

Final Word

The Age of Polycrisis isn’t coming. It’s here.

The good news? If you train for it, if you challenge your assumptions, if you practice under pressure, you can lead through it.

That’s what we help our clients do.

→ Talk to us about designing a custom simulation for your team
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