Paul welcomes back three-time guest Bob Johansen to discuss his co-authored book, Navigating the Age of Chaos, and the shift from VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) to BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible) as a more accurate frame for today’s world.

Bob explains that unlike VUCA, BANI assumes some external events won’t make sense even with data and experts, yet leaders must still decide, often with less information than they want.

Paul and Bob explore why today differs from past crises—citing global climate disruption, AI systems even designers don’t fully understand, and unprecedented cyber threats—and how chronic anxiety, cognitive overload, and polarization shape responses.

The conversation highlights how BANI+ can be used to respond to the challenges of BANI, and other positive actions we can all take to deal with the challenges of the current world.

00:00 Housekeeping and Audio Note

01:05 Bob Returns and New Book

02:15 Setting the Agenda for BANI

03:41 From VUCA to BANI

08:40 Why Today Feels Different

10:05 Anxiety and Human Impact

12:15 Nonlinear Climate and Decisions

16:46 Cognitive Overload and Unthinkable Risks

20:54 BANI Plus Flipping Positive

23:32 Simulation Gaming and Readiness

26:33 Coach Eck Cave Story

29:32 Stories and Resilient Clarity

31:55 Small Actions Beat Helplessness

35:59 Gratitude and Mental Fitness

38:32 Wrap Up and Next Book Tease

39:01 Credits and Call to Action

Humanity Working is a podcast focused on helping individuals, teams and organizations be ready for the future of work by maximizing their human potential.

For more information, and access to our weekly newsletter, visit us at humanityworking.net.

The team returns after the launch of Paul's new book, The AI Ready Human, and this time Matt plays the role of interviewer!

In this episode Matt and Paul discuss the book’s core framework: the “Magnificent Seven” stacked capabilities—readiness, organization, control, balance, motivation, resilience, and adaptability—created in response to programs that treat AI only as a tool and overemphasize prompt engineering.

The explore how to truly create evergreen skills in a world that is ever changing, and how to manage a form of AI that feels neither particularly artificial or intelligent.

They explore concerns about AI training on mixed-quality internet data, the possibility of moving from broad AI to narrower, task-specific systems, and the accelerating growth of AI-generated content. And they look at how the themes from the book have broader applicability to work and life.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

The AI-Ready Human on Amazon
The AI-Ready Human on Barnes and Noble
The AI-Ready Human on (the awesome) Bookshop.org
A Signed Hardback Copy of The AI-Ready Human

00:00 Show Returns and Book Launch

01:00 Special Episode Setup

02:29 Why 90 Days Format

05:48 Magnificent Seven Skills

06:25 Beyond Prompt Engineering

11:50 Evergreen Yet Changing

14:32 Maestro Leadership Metaphor

20:40 AI as Unreliable Teammate

25:02 Bias Data and Narrow AI

31:15 Ethics and authorship

32:28 AI content flood

34:42 AI traps and trust

36:52 Context and memory

41:41 Naming your AIs

45:41 Confidence and hallucinations

47:05 Autonomy mastery purpose

49:23 Rebuilding mastery at work

53:28 Adapting your human role

57:07 Wrap up and next topics

Humanity Working is a podcast focused on helping individuals, teams and organizations be ready for the future of work by maximizing their human potential.

For more information, and access to our weekly newsletter, visit us at humanityworking.net.

In this special episode, Paul announces the release of his new book titled 'AI Ready Human: Your 90 Day Program to Stay Relevant as Technology Transforms Work.'

The book is designed to help readers adapt to the evolving AI-dominated technology landscape through concise daily exercises over a 90-day period.

Listeners and readers of Humanity Working can get a pre-release signed copy of the book by visiting humanityworking.net and looking for the book announcement!

00:00 Special Announcement: New Book Release!

00:22 Introducing 'AI Ready Human'

02:13 Book Structure and Unique Features

03:56 Pre-Order and Availability

05:15 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Humanity Working is a podcast focused on helping individuals, teams and organizations be ready for the future of work by maximizing their human potential.

For more information, and access to our weekly newsletter, visit us at humanityworking.net.