Recent developments in Latin America underline how
poorly many organisations are prepared for developments that expand
the boundaries of what feels possible. In a world of structural
unpredictability, uncertainty is now an essential dimension of
workforce strategy.

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.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.