In 2015, the authors of Responsive Org wrote that “the future is becoming increasingly difficult to predict.”

Today, with global instability, political partisanship, and an ever more rapid rate of change, those words seem prescient.

The tension between organizations optimized for predictability and the unpredictable world we inhabit has reached a breaking point. Only organizations built to adapt are going to survive.

I founded Responsive Conference because I had witnessed the same organizational dysfunctions and habits across nearly two dozen different industries.

In selling to the Fortune 100s, I learned how much of business is relationship-driven. As the first employee at a non-profit education tech company, I witnessed how slow our educational systems are to change. As an acrobat with the San Francisco Opera, I experienced the century-old practices of one of our most storied arts institutions. And in my own little brick-and-mortar restaurant, I learned about San Francisco city politics.

We still structure our organizations for a time where predictability mattered more than speed.

The theme of Responsive Conference 2025 is “Design for change” because the world is changing so rapidly. Only those individuals and organizations that keep pace with change are going to survive.

I hope you’ll join us at the Oakland Museum of California for Responsive Conference 2025.

Let’s build the future of work together!

Get your tickets now!
Prices go up March 15

I love the phrase “mise-en-place,” which is common to professional kitchens and translates to “everything in its place”. The phrase appeals to my inner neat freak.

In restaurants, chefs arrive hours prior to service starting to prepare for the evening ahead. These are the unseen and unsung aspects that make a restaurant successful.

We had a Zander Media video shoot at our film studio in Berkeley last week, and had a luxurious four hours to set up before the clients arrived on set! As a result, it was among the best lit shoots we’ve ever done.

Mis-en-place in a restaurant means arriving hours ahead of time to prepare your ingredients and workspace. Mis-en-place in my video business means keeping our gear closet clean, our batteries charged, and knowing what we need to film long before the actual day.

Preparation matters, but it is only as part of the equation.

Change is coming

In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. At the company’s internal meeting that morning, they discussed that it would be a silent launch, and that “no significant impact on sales” was expected, since the “audience is mostly researchers.”

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

In the thirty months since, we’ve seen a complete transformation of the technology industry. There have been macroeconomic swings – seesawing markets and mass layoffs. The biggest tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into AI, while also laying off thousands of workers.

AI has changed how we work. But the emergence of AI drives home the broader lesson that any organization or industry can be shaken up at any moment.

Operating amidst chaos

The premise of Responsive.org is that the world is changing more rapidly than we have ever seen before in human history. This wasn’t an accepted fact when the manifesto was written a decade ago. But today, especially because of the acceleration brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we take this acceleration for granted.

The lifespan of the most successful companies in the world has plummeted over the last three decades. Companies on the S&P 500 are expected to remain in the index for an average of fifteen years, compared to sixty-one years in 1958. The only companies that survive are those that adapt quickly to change.

The world we are living in is chaotic. It is no longer the case that the unexpected might happen. It can, and probably will, happen at any moment.

Mise-en-place is important. Preparation does matter. But at least as important is the ability to regulate your own response.

The Serenity Well habit

When my good friend was preparing for the birth of his first child, I asked him what he was doing to prepare. He said that while his wife was reading all of the baby books she could find, he was “digging his serenity well deeper.”

Financial stability, strong relationships, and physical health all matter. But none of them directly solves your uncertainty and stress.

What I call the Serenity Well habit – cultivating internal well-being and calm – is your best buttress against chaos. Here are three practices that can help:

Daily discomfort – Train yourself to handle chaos by introducing small stressors, or eustress. Cold exposure, fasting, intense workouts, public speaking — lean into discomfort.

Reset rituals – Build a system that keeps you grounded. This could be meditation, journaling, a morning routine, or a hot bath before bed.

Contingency planning – How do you want to respond when you’re overwhelmed? Decide in advance how you want to handle stress: a breathing exercise, a workout, stepping away.

The world isn’t going to get calmer. It is time to start digging your serenity well.

SNAFU is an acronym for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. The phrase was born out of the chaos of World War II, but it is just as relevant today.

Snafu has become my shorthand for a world that’s always been broken, but is now undeniably so. Things that once seemed stable – governments, economies, industries – are changing too quickly for us to keep pace. Technology is advancing faster than any of us can adapt, which reshapes our job, relationships, and culture before we can adapt.

Rules my grandfather espoused – work hard, get a good education, keep your head down and things will work out okay – aren’t just outdated. They’re actively wrong.

For the last decade, I’ve curated a conference about the “future of work”. The premise is that the speed of change is accelerating. That while work in the 20th century was about the illusion of stability, in the 21st century we are watching that illusion disappear.

Political and social unrest are on the rise. Economies are volatile. Climate change and AI have added new layers to that unpredictability. We’re living in an era where the old rules don’t apply, new rules haven’t been written yet, and chaos is the default setting.

Resilience is the only safety net left

When things start to break down, most people – and most companies – look for stability. We all want something or someone to tell us that things will be okay. Stable jobs, trusted institutions, and a plan we can rely on.

Unfortunately, those are an illusion.

The people and organizations who will thrive aren’t the ones who cling to a false sense of stability. They adapt. Resilience isn’t about toughness, but about flexibility. It’s the ability to absorb shocks and keep moving forward.

Resilience is the only real safety net left because we can’t rely on institutions, stable career paths, or a predictable future. We can thrive only by learning to pivot, adapt, and get back up when we fall down.

The key to resilience is learning how to learn

For most of human history, learning specific skills was enough to survive or build a career. We became blacksmiths, factory workers, software engineers, and then did that work for the next few decades.

That’s not how the world works anymore.

The shelf life of knowledge is short. Industries are being reshaped in weeks, not in decades. What you know today may be obsolete tomorrow.

The skill that matters most isn’t what you know—it’s how quickly you can acquire skills and apply that knowledge. How quickly you can change your mind. The skill we most need to survive and get ahead in the world today is meta-learning, or learning how to learn.

Success is about mastering the process of skill acquisition itself. If resilience is the goal, then meta-learning is the most effective way to achieve it.

How I’m surviving the next four years

I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next four years. Nobody does. But things are going to slow down. Here’s how I’m preparing for the next four years.

Physical resilience: Our bodies are the first thing that break down under stress. When I was in a car crash a few years ago, my visible bruises healed in a week, but it took my body nine months to really recover. The way I train for physical resilience is doing little things, every day, that are physically difficult.

I move every day, train to increase strength and endurance, and spend a couple minutes more in a 200 degree sauna than is easy. I’m not chasing peak fitness. I’m chasing a body that can handle stress.

Emotional resilience: Life is unpredictable. Just in the last month, one friend had a mental breakdown and another died. Grief, uncertainty, and failure are inevitable. We can’t control them. But we can train how we respond. I practice emotional resilience by cultivating tiny habits that increase mental fortitude.

One of the best tools I know for emotional resilience is, amusingly, the physical challenge of cold plunging. Through cold exposure, I’m better able to handle the stresses of other, less intense, circumstances. Just getting into the cold plunge (or turning the shower tap to cold) is a victory. Do more things that scare you.

Mental resilience: The key to mental resilience is brain plasticity and avoiding fixed ways of thinking. Do this by limiting your intake of harmful content and by practicing new skills.

The world is full of outrage porn. The business model of the news and social media is to keep you coming back for more. You don’t have to detach from the world in order to limit the amount of content – especially outrageous or toxic content – you imbibe.

Additionally, practice things that stretch you, mentally. I like to sing. I recently started practicing the piano. I’m attempting to learn Darija (Moroccan Arabic). In short, never stop learning.

The world is not going to slow down. The chaos isn’t going away. If anything, things are only going to get more unpredictable!

The only real strategy left is to become the kind of person who can navigate uncertainty with intelligence, speed, and a sense of humor about the absurdity of it all.

Snafu is about that process—learning fast, adapting faster, and finding resilience in a world that refuses to make sense.

A friend of mine just got an 8-week puppy! I’ve raised two dogs from puppyhood, and helped a dozen other people do the same. Here’s what I’ve learned…

Expect interrupted sleep

Interrupted sleep comes with the territory. I often suggest raising a puppy to people who are considering having a child. It’s good practice.

As with a human baby, a puppy needs whatever it needs right now! Whether that’s to be let out in the middle of the night to pee or just your comfort and attention because your puppy has never slept apart from its litter, expect weeks or months of interrupted sleep.

Torn slippers are your fault

Your puppy peeing in the house or tearing up a slipper is your fault.

A young dog doesn’t know, at first, that the house isn’t somewhere to pee. Similarly, an anxious or a teething dog wants to chew. It is up to you to give it something to chew on.

Like a young human baby, a puppy doesn’t have bladder control. It is important to remember that your puppy isn’t doing something wrong. It is just following its natural proclivities.

It is your job to monitor your puppy, so don’t get angry when your dog makes “mistakes.”

Crate training

If I could teach every new dog owner one skill it would be crate training. The first rule of crate training is never use the crate as punishment. Encourage your dog into the crate. Make it cozy. Make it home.

Think of the crate as the spot the dog returns to when it is tired, wants to rest, wants to be alone. A crate has the additional benefit of being a closed container, so your puppy can’t escape and peer and chew your slippers immediately upon waking.

Training cadence

To raise a young dog, develop a training cadence:

• When your puppy first wakes up, take them out of the crate and outside to potty.
• Offer your puppy some water and food.
• Play with your puppy until it is tired.
• Take your dog outside to potty again.
• Put it back in the crate for a nap.

This will be your cadence for the first few months!

Positive reinforcement

Those metal spiked collars people sometimes use are cruel and hurt. A lot of early animal behavior management was done with dolphins. You can’t force a dolphin to do something it doesn’t want to do. The same is true for puppies (and, I believe, humans).

Train your dog exclusively through positive reinforcement.

Negative reinforcement

For minor issues like peeing on the carpet: your puppy didn’t do it to upset you. Even if you catch it in the act, aggressive scolding is more likely to scare your dog than inform it. Puppies don’t yet know how to control their bladder. Focus on reinforcing the behaviors you do want, and the others will fade naturally.

Reinforcement words

In the 1960s, dolphin trainer Karen Pryor used a clicker to train dolphins at Sea Life Park, Hawaii. This marks behaviors before giving a reward. A reinforcement word works the same way.

Pryor popularized clicker training in her book Don’t Shoot the Dog!, a foundational text in positive reinforcement training.

Pro tip: Don’t use “yes”

Pick a word you don’t use daily to mark desired behavior. Otherwise, your dog may get confused.

Your dog reflects your nervous system

When I’m stressed, my border collie Riley is anxious. When I’m calm, Riley is likely asleep. Dogs are mirrors of their owners’ emotional state. Being aware of your own emotions improves your training.

Know their motivation

Some dogs are food-motivated, some aren’t. Some want petting, others want a job. Understand your dog’s motivation first.

Know your breed’s tendencies

• Labradors want attention, praise, and food.
• Herding dogs need a job.
• Bully breeds want to keep their people safe.

Food is a simple, concrete motivator; praise works too but is less tangible. Plan according to breed tendencies.

Say “Come” only when sure

Don’t misuse “Come.” Only call your dog when you know it will obey. Otherwise, you teach them they can ignore you.

Puppies are rude

Puppies lack the social graces of adult dogs. They want attention, to play, to greet, and frolic. Adult dogs may set boundaries; puppies learn social rules through interactions.

You’re the one who needs to change

We have a belief that dog training is about changing the behavior of your dog. Actually, it’s the opposite. Dog training is an opportunity to get to know yourself, and for you to change so that you can become a good steward of your animal.

Your dog is just being itself. If your puppy pees on the floor, it is because you didn’t take it outside in time. If it chews a shoe, you should have given it more opportunity to chew appropriate toys and shouldn’t have left your dog unattended.

Your dog behaves according to its instincts. You are the one who needs to adopt, and only by doing so will you be able to train your dog.

I love when the English language has a word for something that I’m trying to describe that isn’t in the popular vernacular. Today’s word is “eustress,” which means beneficial stress. This kind of experience that is difficult but ultimately does you good.

Eustress is the opposite of distress, which is harmful. It motivates and enhances performance.

How can we build resilience and personal sovereignty in a world that is more chaotic and unpredictable than any time in the last few hundred years? Eustress may be part of the answer.

On the shortness of life

I’m reading the Clan of the Cave Bear series, which is the fictionalized telling of a prehistoric hunter-gathering Cro Magnon society during the last ice age. Throughout these books, life is fleeting and impermanent. At any moment a main character might be killed by a predator, trapped in a blizzard and frozen, or swept downstream in a flood and drowned.

Life is fleeting, but in our modern world we’ve gotten comfortable. I can order food to my door in minutes and travel to the furthest regions of the Earth in days. In our abundant, anything-you-want-at-the-click-of-a-button world, we’ve forgotten how fragile we are.

What doesn’t kill you…

We say that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That’s wrong.

I’ve always been good at listening and asking questions, but not carrying the weight of other people’s challenges. Perhaps as a result, I’ve listened to personal anecdotes of some of the most horrific personal acts of violence and violation that a single human can inflict on another. That kind of horror isn’t just stressful; it leaves the victims distressed, traumatized.

What doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger. It leaves most people weaker. There’s survivorship bias; we hear stories of people who come out of difficult situations stronger. Most people who undergo intense trauma end up homeless, depressed, or mentally ill.

Complicating the issue, the right amount of stress for one person will kill someone else. I can do a backflip, but most people attempting a backflip for the first time will land on their head! How much stress is the right amount is specific to each individual, and what’s most beneficial for them.

The only thing each person can do is attempt to add some amount of difficulty – eustress – to their daily lives by evaluating what you are capable of today and then doing something slightly more difficult tomorrow.

Tactics to try

I run 6 miles several days a week. If you ordinarily don’t get outside, perhaps you might go for a walk.

I try to get into my cold plunge for 3 minutes every day. (I don’t make it as often as not.) Maybe your equivalent is a moment of cold water at the end of a hot shower.

Eustress is whatever amount of stress is beneficial for you today. It isn’t the amount of stress useful to somebody else, but the amount you can handle and get stronger through the experience.

The next question is how to get started. Here are two great books about behavior change to get you started:

• The mega-bestseller Atomic Habits by James Clear provides a framework for changing behavior and adopting new habits. James advocates for changing your environment to make change easier.
• The New York Times bestseller Tiny Habits by my old professor BJ Fogg, PhD is a gem. Among other overlooked aspects of the book, BJ teaches deliberate celebration as a mechanism for reinforcing behaviors.

The practice of resilience

Our world today is stressful. Between global conflicts, wildfires, political unrest and global climate change, societies are more rife, challenged, and problematic than most of us have ever seen.

The way forward is through preparing against the worst, while still hoping for the best. The way forward is to practice difficult things before you need to.