The anniversary of the pandemic recalls the way in which our industry adapted to those shocks and expanded our capacities, and should remind us to trust our own experience in turning uncertainty and fear into new possibilities.
In recent months, the World Uncertainty Index — calculated by academics at the business intelligence company Economist Intelligence Unit by counting the number of times the word “uncertain” appears in their global country reports — has nearly tripled, climbing from 14,600 instances in June 2024 to 47,800 in February 2025.
Transformation and innovation rarely come to pass without uncertainty, points out Nathan Furr, professor of strategy and technology at INSEAD business school in Paris, and co-author of The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown. But navigating the unknown, he said, can feel like moving through dense fog.
Sherrif Karamat, CAE, President CEO, PCMA and CEMA
One pathway to clarity — and to success — is staying grounded in purpose and values, rather than shifting them to match short-term outcomes. According to Furr — who Convene interviewed in 2022 and who spoke at PCMA Convening EMEA in Copenhagen in 2023 — when you navigate uncertainty based on your values, you “set yourself up to never fail,” and free yourself from anxiety about outcomes over which you have no control. At PCMA, that means we continue to hold true to our values of welcoming and learning from diverse individuals and working to reduce our environmental impact, as we pursue our mission of leveraging business events to drive positive economic growth and social change.
Our industry has some professional advantages — when we are at our best, events serve to bring together multiple points of view, helping our audiences to solve complex challenges regardless of differences. And we are hard-wired for collaboration, which multiplies our exposure not only to ideas and trusted sources of information, but to new networks for sharing them.
As I write this, it has been five years almost to the day since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic — in March 2020, the World Uncertainty Index hit 56,200. That we can succeed while holding onto purpose is more than wishful thinking. Research conducted by Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), a CEO-led coalition, compared companies who reacted to the pandemic by laying off staff, canceling contracts, and freezing investments with other “high-purpose” companies — those that prioritized staff, helped suppliers, and supported their local communities. Post-pandemic, the high-purpose companies posted valuations that were four times higher than their “low-purpose” peers, Nandika Madgavkar, CECP’s head of strategic engagement and growth, told The Ethical Corporation magazine.
We cannot forget the pandemic’s calamitous cost to human life or how it temporarily extinguished our ability to gather face-to-face, the essence of our industry. But the way in which our industry adapted to those shocks and expanded our capacities should remind us to trust our own experience in turning uncertainty and fear into new possibilities. We are resilient.
