432 Leading in a BANI World: Making Sense of Chaos with Bob Johansen and Jamais Cascio
In this episode of Partnering Leadership, futurists Bob Johansen and Jamais Cascio join the conversation to explore the ideas behind their new book, The Age of Chaos: A Sense-Making Guide to a BANI World That Doesn’t Make Sense. Both guests bring decades of deep foresight work, scenario planning, and leadership insight—Bob through more than 50 years with the Institute for the Future, and Jamais as the originator of the BANI framework (“brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible”). Their combined perspectives create a powerful lens for leaders facing a world where old assumptions and linear playbooks no longer hold.
Across the discussion, they argue that today’s disruptions are not isolated shocks. They are interconnected, compounding forces that make the environment fundamentally different from the “VUCA world” many leaders were trained for. Johansen and Cascio unpack how brittleness shows up in organizations disguised as efficiency, why anxiety has become a rational and necessary signal, and how nonlinearity rewrites traditional cause-and-effect expectations. They challenge leaders to rethink certainty, decision-making, and the stories they tell inside their organizations.
At the heart of the conversation is a clear message: leading in a BANI world requires a shift in mindset. The best leaders will cultivate clarity instead of certainty, ask better questions instead of providing fast answers, and build organizations that bend rather than break under pressure. Cascio highlights how empathy, diverse perspectives, and even “useful wrongness” serve as strategic advantages. Johansen pushes leaders to think farther into the future than they are comfortable with—then work backwards to create resilient clarity in the present.
The episode does not offer easy fixes. Instead, it gives listeners a framework for making sense of complexity, a set of practices to strengthen foresight, and a renewed understanding of the human side of leadership in chaotic times. For CEOs, board members, and senior executives navigating relentless uncertainty, this conversation provides both grounding and a challenge: to lead with more humility, more imagination, and more future-back discipline.
Actionable Takeaways
- You’ll learn why “clarity beats certainty” and how leaders who project confidence without openness can miss critical signals in chaotic environments.
- Hear how to spot brittleness in your systems—and why high efficiency often hides vulnerabilities that collapse under stress.
- You’ll learn why a healthy level of anxiety is necessary and how leaders can use it to sharpen attention without slipping into dysfunction.
- Hear how to apply foresight as a leadership practice, using scenarios not to predict the future but to “vaccinate” your organization against emerging risks.
- You’ll learn why nonlinear environments break traditional planning, and how to cultivate neuro-flexibility and improvisational leadership.
- Hear how storytelling becomes a strategic tool, helping leaders create meaning, focus attention, and align teams in moments of uncertainty.
- You’ll learn why cross-generational leadership is becoming a competitive advantage, especially as digital natives bring new skills to nonlinear problem-solving.
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