The last couple of years, European energy markets have accelerated faster than most organizations have been able to handle, and 2026 won’t be an exception. Shorter pricing intervals, higher data intensity, and growing customer-centric complexity are now defining features of the markets, whether companies are scaling PPAs and renewable portfolios or operating more traditional trading and generation businesses.
In this context, we have experienced a widening performance gap between companies. Some firms are bringing new renewable products to market in months, while others are stuck in internal alignment loops that delay launches by quarters, if not more. Some are able to scale their business at low marginal cost, while others are struggling and carrying operational risk they often even can’t quantify.
Based on many projects with many different European energy companies, it is clear to us at CommodityFirst that while the market-leading energy traders are good at making strategic prioritization and execute efficiently, the less successful traders are suffering from Strategic FOMO and inelastic operating models:
- “Strategic FOMO” i.e., by Fear-Of-Missing-Out, priorities are either missing or not clear enough, causing the organization to be spread very thin, and
- “Inelastic Operating Model” i.e., current model not designed for a fast-moving and customer-centric market, hampered by internal silos, causing ineffective execution.
1.The rise of “Strategic FOMO”
Strategic FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) arises when management feel compelled to compete on all fronts simultaneously: launching too many products, pursuing too many markets, running too many projects, and thus stretching already limited resources further.
The instinct to “chase everything” is understandable, especially when opportunities in renewables, PPAs, and flexibility look attractive on paper. But in practice, fragmented priorities create fragmented execution, internal silos, inconsistent processes, ballooning costs, and increased operational and project risks.
Strategic FOMO has become one of the most recurring value destroyers in the industry.
Companies must prioritise better, dare to say no, and stick to what they believe in.
2. The consequences of Inelastic Operating Model
Failing to modernise the operating model is just as damaging as spreading yourself too thin.
Many organisations still rely on processes, data flows, and governance frameworks designed for markets that moved at an hourly tempo, requiring much less data processing, and carried less customer-centric complexity.
As renewables, PPAs, flexibility services, and sub-hourly trading scale, these legacy operating models simply cannot support the accuracy or cross-functional coordination required e.g., Business and IT.
The result is a widening gap between commercial ambition and organisational reality:
- Good ideas, but they can’t be executed.
- Profitable opportunities, but they remain theoretical, and
- Manual fixes, system patches, and firefighting is the new normal.
So, modernising the operating model is a prerequisite for being competitive.
Why so many organisations still struggle?
Even when the strategy is clear on paper, execution often falls short. The gap usually comes from one or more of three interrelated challenges:
- Poor or inconsistent data
If the foundation is unreliable, no product can be scaled safely or profitably. - No clear ownership of strategic bets
When everyone is involved, no one is accountable, and progress stalls. - Fragmented delivery
Teams work in silos, leading to tailored deals, weak controls, and expensive operations, resulting in strategic initiatives that look great on paper but underperform.
How to regain focus?
Regaining strategic focus is less about adding new initiatives and more about creating the conditions for clarity, discipline, and execution. To do so, many leaders we work with use a priority playbook covering the following:
- Committing to a limited number of strategic bets (and saying no to the rest)
Successful firms select only a few areas where they intend to lead and deliberately deprioritise everything else, creating organisational bandwidth and keeping complexity from spiralling. - Building a foundation that can scale data, systems, and governance
They treat data quality, system readiness, and governance as prerequisites for any commercial move. - Redesigning how the organisation works
They are moving away from siloed delivery and toward integrated operating models, where trading, origination, IT, risk, and other support functions jointly own outcomes rather than hand over requirements. This creates coherence, reduces friction, and accelerates delivery. - Investing early in market intelligence and product operations capabilities
With regulation, politics, and technology reshaping markets, firms need roles that translate change into insights that generate proper action. Market intelligence and product ops teams ensure the organisation stays observant, adaptive, and aligned. - Elevating IT to a strategic enabler
They are restructuring governance, so IT has a seat at the strategic table, with shared accountability for value creation and customer delivery.
Strategic discipline is not about doing less but doing the right few things extraordinarily well.
Focus IS THE competitive advantage
The companies that will succeed won’t be those with the most product ideas or the widest portfolio experiments. They’ll be the firms that put clarity, data quality, and operating discipline at the core of their strategy.
Choose your bets, back them with the right foundations, and build an organisation that is designed and able to act, instead of react.
The most successful companies will be the ones that have the discipline to focus, the operating model to deliver, and the data quality to scale without friction.
The cost of getting this wrong is no longer abstract. It appears as:
- Delayed revenue from trading, including PPAs and structured deals.
- Imbalance penalties from slow operational processes.
- Stranded flexibility products that can’t be automated, and
- Commercial opportunities lost to competitors moving faster.
But the upside for getting it right is equally clear: faster and effective product launches, lower operational costs, more resilient portfolios, and the ability to monetise renewables and flexibility at the pace the market demands.
Clarity is no longer just a virtue; it’s a competitive advantage.