Latest news with #BobJohansen
Forbes
7 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
How To Plan Events In Uncertain Times: Use VUCA To Overcome Challenges
Shawn Pierce is president of the Strategic Events, Meetings & Incentives (SEM&I) division at MCI USA. Every morning, I open my news apps to headlines about evolving government policies, new tariffs, shifts in international relations and economic fluctuations—all of which directly impact how businesses organize and plan meetings and events. These unpredictable, and often downright unfavorable, conditions are already impacting event attendance. A global survey of more than 175 event professionals by the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) found that more than 75% of event organizers report lower event registration numbers due to the current political and economic environment. In addition to domestic event attendance dropping, global organizations are questioning whether it's advisable to host events in the U.S. at all. Between March 31 and April 8, 2025, the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) conducted an industry sentiment poll of global business professionals. One out of five respondents reported their organizations have considered canceling (or actually have canceled) a U.S.-based meeting. What is clear is that we now operate in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment. Our inclination might be to freeze event planning and ride out the storm, but history shows that innovation thrives in adversity. Leaders who master this environment don't just survive the disruption; they turn it into a competitive advantage. Here's how you can do the same: VUCA Prime: Your New Guide The solution isn't to retreat or cancel strategic meetings. It's to approach them with what leadership expert Bob Johansen of the Institute for the Future calls 'VUCA Prime,' using 'vision, understanding, clarity, and agility' to navigate volatile times. When external forces create chaos, successful leaders anchor their teams with a clear, compelling vision. Budget constraints and concerns about travel are powerful forces within an organization. Attendees must be able to make a case to decision-makers to demonstrate what attending your meeting will accomplish and why it matters more than ever. Your goal is to ensure that your event isn't seen as an optional networking opportunity, but as essential to an organization's success. Communicate your event's strategic importance early and often. Frame it as mission-critical. Ensure promotional materials describe exactly what attendees can expect to take away from your event. Bonus points for providing attendees with easily digestible 'soundbites' in-session materials that they can bring back to their organizations to demonstrate quick wins. Event planners must develop a deep understanding of attendees' unique situations. Do international participants need extra visa processing time? Are businesses worried about funding freezes? International attendees face especially significant hurdles. One respondent to the PCMA survey said, "All of our Canadian members canceled [their event attendance]. They are afraid of border detainments." Yet even with travel bans and visa requirements changing day by day, fewer than one in five event organizers have updated travel-related messaging to support international attendees—a critical missed opportunity. Remind attendees to check passport and visa requirements well in advance. Share destination details, including local culture and safety information. Offer invitation letters to facilitate applications for necessary visas. Designate informed liaisons for international guests to contact with questions, concerns and requests. Understanding what stands in the way of event attendance is key to addressing those issues to a level that attendees can feel comfortable and confident in attending your event. In our current environment, event planners must manage unpredictability and complexity by insisting on clarity in every facet of event planning, from attendee communications to vendor relationships. A reliable way to create as much stability as possible in a volatile environment is to tighten up the logistics that are within your control. Consider these tips: • Speakers: Insist on early arrivals and make robust backup plans, both for in-person alternatives and remote presentations. Ensure you have adequate technology and expertise to go virtual if needed. • Food And Beverage: Lock in written agreements; verbal agreements are obsolete. PCMA survey respondents noted food prices are "through the roof." Sourcing locally is key to availability, price reliability and sustainability. Build anticipated cost increases into initial budgets. • Products And Services: For events outside the U.S., prioritize local sourcing over international shipping to avoid customs delays and tariff costs. Event planners are already feeling tariff effects on everything from giveaway items to AV equipment. • Venue Selection: Consider "secondary cities," which often offer more pricing flexibility and greater room for contract negotiation than primary markets while still providing excellent facilities. The most successful organizations display agility—the ability to adapt quickly to changing conditions. This requires both a flexible mindset and robust systems. • Build flexibility into contracts. The PCMA survey revealed that 73% of organizations haven't changed their contracts in response to policy shifts. Smart planners are updating standard contracts with protective language, including force majeure clauses that specifically address policy changes and performance clauses to ensure vendors deliver despite their own challenges. • Prepare for multiple scenarios. Develop contingency plans for various scenarios, including postponement options, venue alternatives and attendance thresholds that might trigger plan adjustments. The New Normal The good news is that the initial panic over tariffs, travel bans and other policy changes has generally stabilized into a 'new normal.' It is a reality, however, that requires advanced planning, contingencies and strategic thinking. Successful leaders are not reactive to current conditions. Instead, they see opportunities to improve, streamline and deliver more impactful experiences to event attendees. The organizations that structure their approach around the proven framework of VUCA Prime won't just survive the current disruptions; they'll emerge stronger and more resilient. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
Business Journals
01-07-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
Transformative strategies unveiled: Leveraging future-back thinking for business resilience
Today's business environment can be characterized as having a high level of uncertainty. An ever-changing business landscape makes it hard to strategize, and leaders are searching for answers. In order to help, on June 4 the Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute's Growth and Innovation Leaders (GAIL) Forum hosted a talk by a well-known futurist, Bob Johansen, distinguished fellow with the Institute for the Future. Future-back thinking starts with exercises to envision possible futures for your business and then using those scenarios to walk back and strategize about what your organization needs to do to prepare for those futures. It provides executives with a way to plan and prepare. In one of my earlier sessions with Johansen, he talked about the fact that in several of their future-back sessions they imagined the scenario of a global pandemic and for those firms that went through that exercise, they were more prepared when COVID-19 struck. In terms of today's environment one of Johansen's key messages was about the current level of change and how, no matter what business you are in, the future is even less predictable now than ever. He also talked about moving from a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambitious) world where the future was 'uncertain but understandable' to today being in a BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible) world (term coined by Jamais Cascio). In this version of the world, the BANI future is fraught with tension, focused on the crisis of grievance and bleeding trust. In the move from VUCA to BANI, the assumption per Johansen is that 'the future may not be understandable.' He presented a compelling picture of what this new future looks like and then provided some hope by encouraging everyone in the audience to use generative AI to help be more productive. Using AI to augment our current knowledge and provide new questions and answers is a way to keep up with the high rate of change. For those of you interested in this work, I would strongly suggest reading his latest book, 'Leaders Make the Future,' and getting his new book that drops in September, "Navigating the Age of Chaos.' As the presentation continued, we talked about other ways we can all learn and be ready for the future. One necessity discussed was collaborating with inter-generational teams. And as we talked about this, I looked at who was on the virtual session. We had UA students, faculty, and staff as well as senior business executives, leaders from local startups and alumni. Our audience was inter-generational. During the first on-site and all-day event of the GAIL Forum on Feb. 4, 2025, we asked participants to sit together with people 'like them' and had codes for student, faculty/staff, and business executive on their name tags. Then after having time with people in similar roles, we asked them to mix up and sit at different tables. They could easily look at their name tags (color coded) to choose a table with variety in roles. I was not sure how this exercise would work, but at the end of the day, participants thanked me for having them move to other groups in a purposeful manner. The overall lesson learned for me, when blending my learning from Johansen's talk and our own work in the GAIL Forum, is that leaning into the future, particularly as it is described by many as consisting of current and anticipated chaos, requires a solid group of different people, with 'different' being not just current job roles but also types of industries, social and cultural backgrounds, and more. Our job is and will be to prepare to learn together. When talking about the BANI future, our expert futurist told us that the 'BANI future will reward clarity but punish certainty.' What better way to question what we think is certain than to lean on people in our network who bring new and different thinking to the topics of the day. Our next session with the GAIL Forum will take place in September. If you want help navigating the uncertainty with a group of peers who are helpful and knowledgeable, make sure to reach out and learn more about how to get involved with the Forum. Write to me directly at aei@ and/or learn more at our website.
