We Cannot Flee the Future: Preparing for the 2030s Today [Part IV]

AUTHOR’S ATTESTATION: This article was written entirely by Jeff De Cagna AIMP DAIG FRSA FASAE FNI.Dir, a human author, without using generative AI. 

As of this column’s publication date (8/25/26), there are 1,225 days until Tuesday 1/1/30, the first day of the next decade.

Four Months Left in 2026 

Next Tuesday 9/1/26, just one week following this column’s publication date, yet another uncertain future we cannot flee will begin: the final four months before 2027 arrives. This is a future of short duration to be sure, and yet it is also an invaluable transition opportunity for the association community. When this brief window closes at the end of December, there will be just 36 months—fewer than 1,100 days—left to prepare for the 2030s. To get their associations ready, how will our community’s decision-makers move forward between now and the beginning of next year: by focusing their agency, attention, and adaptation on leaving the organizations for which they are responsible better than how they found them, or by prioritizing the urgency of short-term metrics?

Building the Capacity for Anticipation

Looking ahead to the 2030s, association decision-makers must understand that they are working without a reliable map to navigate the multiple plausible futures that could emerge. They cannot control the futures facing their organizations, nor can they magically “future-proof” their way out of them. Instead, association decision-makers must build and use the capacity for anticipation to strengthen their vigilance in recognizing both opportunities and threats, and enable the work of shaping and stewarding better futures for stakeholders and successors.

As I wrote in Part III of this series, associations “will continue to confront intense and unabated systemic upheaval in the 2030s.” To facilitate developing a structured capability for anticipation in unforgiving conditions, association decision-makers will benefit from following the guidance of futurist Jamais Cascio, who first proposed the BANI framework (brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible) in 2018. BANI is a powerful alternative to the widely-adopted VUCA framework (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) for sense-making, meaning-making, and decision-making in the context of global disruption. The BANI framework is an invaluable resource for association decision-makers and contributors as they seek to increase the resilience of their organizations through anticipation.

Throughout the dark days of the global pandemic and every day since, association decision-makers have dealt directly with the inherent brittleness of both human-made and natural systems at every level of our society in which their organizations participate and also contribute. Even with the critical health emergency long over, each of us has developed a very personal understanding of anxiety and the harmful impact that living in a relentless context of crisis can exert on our mental and physical well-being. These severe conditions are direct threats to both the present and future stability of associations and the fields they serve.

The conditions of non-linearity and incomprehensibility require association decision-makers to pursue a process of wayfinding that is foundational to stewardship. As our world becomes even more non-linear, they will need to think and act beyond the myriad orthodox beliefs that induce complacency in our community’s organizations and discover more adaptive and purposeful actions to help nurture individual and collective resilience over the long term. The rapid adoption of incomprehensible technologies demands deep reflection, intentional learning, and ethical decision-making to anticipate and push back against their increasingly detrimental consequences for all human beings. Association decision-makers must demonstrate care to ensure that any inherent optimism they hold for the future does not prevent them from making sober assessments of the effects of a BANI world, and the serious challenges they must surmount to realize potential best-case outcomes.

As I wrote in Part I of this series, “…for every association committed to maximizing its potential in the next decade, a consistent practice of foresight is no longer optional.” During the four-month window before 2027 begins, I challenge every association in our community to let go of long-standing orthodox beliefs about anticipation through foresight and undertake the vital work of learning with the future with a clear and purposeful intention.

Look for Part V in October

In Part V of this series, which will be posted in October, I will discuss why associations must work to expand the surface area of attraction for stakeholder relationships beyond the growing limitations of membership. Enjoy your September, thank you for reading, and please stay safe.