The power of uncertainty

In his 2007 book Black Swan, the Lebanese-born American philosopher and risk specialist Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that societies are not undone by dramatic events as such, but by their own persistent failure to imagine them. What some of history’s most dramatic and high-impact developments have in common, from the Visigoths’ sack of Rome to 9/11, is that they all sat outside the mental models through which political actors and institutions assess risk, stability and continuity. The most disruptive moments, the book concludes, are those that appear implausible. At least until, suddenly, they do not. 

The events that unfolded recently in Latin America exemplify this dynamic with particular clarity. Over the course of a single weekend, claims, denials and counter-claims surrounding the United States’ intervention in Venezuela, abduction of Nicolás Maduro, and subsequent announcement that they will ‘run’ the country, spread rapidly across global media and digital platforms. Accounts diverged sharply, and interpretations splintered. Yet what stood out was not the presumed predictability, or unpredictability, of these events in the immediate term, nor that they lacked historical precedent, but the way in which they appeared to widen the boundaries of what now feels possible. The destabilising effect lay less in the event itself than in the growing sense that actions which would have seemed implausible even months earlier are now entering the realm of the conceivable.

Reflecting on how such a sharp change in perspective can occur presents a useful lesson for businesses: as the rules of the game can be subverted on a dime, the challenge is no longer confined to responding to geopolitical events once these have been clearly defined. Instead, it lies in being prepared for a world in which uncertainty itself has become the baseline condition, where power is exercised unpredictably, information is fragmentary, and the boundary between the plausible and the implausible can no longer be taken for granted.  

From rules-based order to episodic power

For much of the post-Cold War era, geopolitics operated, at least in principle, within a recognisable, rules-based framework. Sovereignty, diplomatic protocol, legal process, international right, and managed escalation provided imperfect, at times contested, but generally stable reference points for states and, by extension, for the institutions and the people operating within and across them. As many have indicated, even conflict tends to follow discernible patterns, allowing governments and economies alike to plan around risk rather than simply absorb it. 

Recent events in Venezuela, however, point to a more unsettling and increasingly widespread process. The rapid circulation of claims involving direct state action beyond established diplomatic or legal channels reflects a growing reliance on what tends to be described by political scientists as ‘episodic power’: interventions that are situational, asymmetric, and difficult to anticipate. In such cases, power is exercised less through predictable mechanisms, and more through sudden moments of disruption whose meaning and limits are often unclear even as they unfold. 

This pattern is not confined to any single actor or region. Similar anxieties are beginning to shape discussions around a wide range of previously inconceivable scenarios: the prospect of direct confrontation involving NATO states, escalating tensions over Taiwan, or abrupt shifts in long-standing political alignments within Europe itself. What is destabilising in each case is not simply the likelihood of any one outcome, but the growing sense that assumptions once treated as fixed can no longer be relied upon.

This reflects a broader subversion of the assumptions that underpin geopolitical stability. As volatility ceases to be an exception and becomes structural, organisations can draw an important insight: geopolitical uncertainty can impact the world of work in faster and less legible ways than existing organisational models are equipped to handle. What is even more challenging than heightened risk is the erosion of the frameworks through which risk itself is traditionally understood, assessed, and mitigated. 

Unpredictability and the fragmentation of interpretation

Beyond their unpredictability, these recent events stood out due the speed with which interpretations fractured in their aftermath. Within hours, radically different narratives were circulating in parallel: some framed developments as an unprecedented escalation of state power, while others dismissed them as disinformation, signalling, or strategic theatre. Reactions diverged sharply across political, regional, and professional lines, with little consensus about intent, legality, or likely consequences. 

As a range of historical episodes, from the Haitian Revolution to the Arab Spring, have demonstrated, moments of profound geopolitical unpredictability seldom generate consensus, and yield, instead, a proliferation of competing interpretations and responses. When events do not fit established patterns or rules, shared frames of reference or explanatory models collapse, and, in their place, one finds a crowded informational landscape shaped by partial evidence, speculation, ideological priors, and the accelerating logic of digital platforms. 

For organisations, especially at a time when employee expectations are increasingly pressuring employers to take clear-cut positions on complex and highly nuanced issues, this creates a real challenge. Employees encounter geopolitics not as settled fact, but as contested narrative, often in real time, and through informal, unverified, or, at times, untrustworthy channels. Leadership teams and internal communications functions are drawn into sense-making exercises under conditions of ambiguity, where silence can be mistaken for indifference, and speed risks amplifying uncertainty rather than resolving it.

This issue goes beyond reputational management. Information disorder, which the World Economic Forum recently singled out as the fastest growing global risk, increasingly affects trust, morale and decision-making at work, especially in moments where geopolitical developments feel sudden, opaque and difficult to contextualise. In this environment, organisations are forced to grapple not only with events themselves, but with the fractured ways in which those events are understood.

Geopolitical risk as workforce strategy

Geopolitical risk is becoming a core dimension of workforce strategy, especially at a time of growing uncertainty. Even where organisations have no direct operations in politically volatile regions, exposure can arise through global supply chains, remote working arrangements, cross-border projects or reputational spillover across markets. Similarly, sudden changes in diplomatic relations, sanctions regimes or travel restrictions can disrupt where work is done, who can do it, and under what conditions, often with little warning.

This has practical consequences. Decisions about employee mobility, international assignments, remote-work policies and contractor engagement are increasingly shaped by geopolitical volatility rather than purely commercial logic. Employers must also contend with heightened duty-of-care obligations, balancing employee safety and wellbeing against legal, operational and reputational constraints that may shift rapidly as events unfold.

This is not simply a matter of risk mitigation: it raises deeper questions about how work is structured in an uncertain world. As our upcoming Future @ Work 2026 report shows, organisations that continue to treat geopolitics as an external shock risk building workforce models that are brittle rather than resilient. By contrast, those that integrate geopolitical risk into workforce planning are better positioned to adapt when disruption occurs, whether through flexibility in where work happens, clarity in decision-making, or preparedness for rapid reconfiguration when assumptions no longer hold.

So what can employers do in practice?

From capability gaps to leading strategic foresight

Amid growing geopolitical uncertainty, episodic power, and fragmented understanding, leadership capabilities play a crucial role. However, leaders are often required to make decisions without the comfort of stable rules or clear precedents, while traditional models of leadership development, which often focus on optimisation, efficiency or best practice, offer limited preparation for this kind of uncertainty. What is needed instead is a shift towards strategic foresight as a core organisational capability.

Scenario planning plays a central role here. Properly understood, it is not an exercise in prediction, but a disciplined way of exploring multiple plausible futures and stress-testing assumptions about how work is organised. When geopolitical developments challenge long-standing norms, scenario thinking allows organisations to ask not ‘what will happen?’, but ‘what would we do if…?’. An ability to reframe strategic thinking along these lines is simply critical for the future of work.

More concretely, embedding foresight requires more than occasional ad hoc workshops. It demands cross-functional engagement and governance among workforce strategy, legal, risk and leadership teams, explicit recognition that ethical and people-related considerations are integral to strategic decisions, and investment in human-centred skills to develop leaders who can communicate uncertainty clearly without either minimising risk or fuelling anxiety.

In this sense, geopolitical volatility does not merely expose leadership gaps, but also clarifies what effective, and future-oriented, leadership must entail. Organisations that invest in foresight and long-term strategic judgment are better placed to navigate uncertainty as a condition of contemporary and future work.

Preparing organisations for uncertainty

Organisations can no longer afford to treat geopolitics as a distant or intermittent risk surfacing only during moments of obvious crisis. Instead, and as exemplified by the events that unfolded in Venezuela, geopolitical unpredictability is now the defining condition of the global strategic environment, shaping how power is exercised, how information circulates, and how decisions must be made.

For employers, this offers a clear imperative: strategic resilience must be built around active anticipation, not passive reaction. Workforce strategy cannot be premised on the assumption of stable geopolitical backdrops or gradual change. Instead, it must be designed to accommodate variation and ambiguity, embedding geopolitical thinking directly into planning and people strategy rather than leaving it siloed in risk or compliance functions.

Likewise, leadership development must shift beyond technical competence toward the cultivation of judgment, ethical reasoning, and decisive action under uncertainty. Organisations that develop these capacities create the conditions for strategic agility, especially the ability to monitor the environment, consider alternative futures, adapt resources, and make quick, informed decisions that preserve continuity even when the context shifts unpredictably.

Organisations must also resist the temptation to respond to volatility purely through short-term fixes. Scenario planning, once a niche strategic exercise, is quickly becoming one of the most critical capabilities for the future of work. Used well, it helps organisations model a range of plausible futures, stress-test assumptions, and identify both risks and opportunities, providing a coherent basis for proactive decision-making rather than reactive scrambling. 

Above all, however, the lesson for employers is not simply to cope with volatility, but to integrate geopolitical awareness into enterprise strategy, workforce design and leadership practice. In a world where disruption feels increasingly plausible and certainty is in short supply, organisations succeed not by predicting the next shock, but by building the capacity to respond to it thoughtfully, consistently and with purpose to all possible futures, both conceivable and, what today might seem, inconceivable ones.