I’m that annoying person who’s forever recommending things without being asked. Well, I’m annoying in a range of respects – this is just one of them. Specifically, I find myself suggesting podcasts unbidden quite a lot at the moment.

So, here we go again. Do you listen to The Imperfects? For those of us in the Western hemisphere, the Australian podcast doesn’t necessarily always have recognisable guests, but the topics in focus on each episode often provide more of a ‘way in’.  

Spun out of an organisation called the Resilience Project, which delivers programs on mental health to schools, workplaces and communities, the podcast explores diverse themes, all ultimately with an emphasis on helping listeners cultivate gratitude, empathy and mindfulness.

On a recent episode, the psychologist Dr Emily Musgrove explores ‘the certainty of uncertainty’. With the premise being that the only certainty in life is… uncertainty. I listened to this as I was lying on the floor of my son’s room past midnight, willing him to give up the fight against sleep. Oh for the certainty of being able to say ‘goodnight’, close the door and have an evening to myself. Alas…

And what do you know – the next day, when a friend in a parents’ group bemoaned the impossible angst of caring for kids with unpredictable and high-intensity needs, I found myself recommending this podcast. Over the course of the working day, the challenge of finding healthy ways to deal with uncertainty was lodged in my brain.

I have written in rather a number of cultural insight presentations that the world is becoming ever-more uncertain and volatile. A few months ago, I recall a well-respected marketing guru lamenting the frequency with which marketers espouse this idea. This gave me pause for thought.

He was right that there are many tropes flying around clients’ businesses (viz. blanket statements about generations) that are trotted out based on supposed cultural insight that are just plain misinterpretations, over-statements and derived from no real evidence.  

But the profound uncertainty of how various systemic challenges in our world today will play out, with AI and climate change as just two examples? The accelerating pace of change of such forces? I will stand by that. Let alone that those major forces that have the potential to deliver nearer-in shocks, such as the US elections and instability in the Middle East.

The Scenarios Programme at Oxford Said Business School (here goes another recommendation) builds its thinking on a foundation of recognising increasing TUNA conditions in the world today – forces that are turbulent, unpredictable, novel and ambiguous. The Oxford approach looks at how organisations can build greater resilience to help them adapt to different plausible scenarios in this context.

And so we return to resilience. Strategically, we can build it through a rigorous process of identifying a set of plausible scenarios for our businesses and working back from those to ensure that whatever pathway we find ourselves on, whatever predictable or unpredictable events occur, we can better cope and even thrive.

On a personal level, if we follow the Resilience Project’s principles, we can build greater resilience through practices that encourage us to work on our gratitude, empathy and mindfulness.

But what does this mean for the world of work? The uncertainty we are navigating can feel challenging. I hear from friends across agencies talking about spiky workflows the likes they’ve never seen before (a dearth of briefs for quite some time, then suddenly they flow in). Or projects that looked like they were over the line after lots of effort are suddenly cancelled for unforeseen reasons. Budget black holes emerge and scupper plans. Redundancies and reorganisations side-swipe individuals and their work, and create effects down and along the chain.

Many of us find that we have to become more agile and tough to navigate unpredictability. Little can be assumed. It takes effort to cultivate a ‘go with the flow’ mindset, and it can be difficult when at the same time you need a certain level of pre-planning to ensure the right resource is in place, timelines can be hit and so on. It was ever thus in the agency world, it’s just more so now.

Beyond this, if we can carve out the space and time to see if we can identify any patterns and spot any trajectories (this is what we’re good at as researchers, after all) we might start to strengthen our confidence to identify plausible scenarios for our industry and individual businesses. Then from here, to figure out how to build our resilience to adapt to the changes these bring. Whether it’s AI, clients in-housing more work, or the impact of climate change or regulatory changes on our work, and much more besides.

Dr Emily Musgrove’s mantra to help get through the uncertainty day in, day out, might help us make our way through this. Whatever our situation, whatever doubts we have about the future, we can stop and say ‘I’m all right, right now’. 

That is, as long as a lion isn’t charging at you. And if there is, why did you book that dangerous safari for your holiday? Maybe something more relaxing and mindful, next time?

Louise McLaren is managing director (London) at Lovebrands