Managing Uncertainty

Hosted by Bryghtpath LLC

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Latest episode

Jun 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Welcome to Managing Uncertainty, a podcast series discussing crisis management, business continuity, & crisis communications. You’ll learn strategies, tactics, and resources about preparing for, responding to, and recovering from all sorts of disruptions and critical moments. Will you be ready to lead through your company’s critical moment?

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50 recent

June 15, 20269 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #329: The Champion Problem

On this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryan Strawser of Bryghtpath examines why some resilience programs survive a change in leadership and others quietly fall apart. The deciding factor is rarely the quality of the plans. It comes down to business alignment and whether the program’s champion understands that alignment is the point. Bryan makes a contrarian case: a strong champion can actually be the more fragile of the two. A program propped up by one leader’s relationships looks like success, right up until that leader is promoted, retires, or gets reorganized away. When they go, the entire case for …

June 13, 202614 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #328: Subtract

Most resilience programs don’t fail because the plans are wrong. They fail because capable leaders make the work more complicated than it needs to be, and never tie it back to the business. In this episode, Bryan Strawser of Bryghtpath explains the complexity tax and why “adding rigor” usually makes things worse. Bryan walks through the five ways good leaders overcomplicate resilience. A structure no one can explain, terminology that hides meaning, plans untethered from the business, borrowed confidence about plans you don’t understand, and solving confusion by adding more process. Each one comes from caring and knowing a lot, not …

June 10, 202614 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #328: Subtract

May 12, 202610 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #327: The IT Problem Myth

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser breaks down the dangerous fallacy of the “IT-only” crisis. When your cloud provider goes down at 9:14 AM on a Tuesday, the resulting chaos—from broken point-of-sale systems to dark warehouses—isn’t a technical glitch; it’s a total business failure. If your CEO’s only move is calling the CIO to ask “When is it fixed?”, your organization is already in a state of collapse. Bryan outlines the three critical shifts executive teams must make in the next 90 days to move beyond silence and technical metrics. He …

May 4, 20266 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #326: Compliance is not Resilience

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser explains why a clean compliance audit and a resilient organization are not the same thing. Compliance proves what you did in the past. Resilience is what you execute under pressure in the future. Bryan walks through why a 300-page binder is no substitute for rehearsed leadership, with lessons from last year’s AWS outage. He explains why resilience programs go obsolete when they sit adjacent to executive strategy instead of moving with the business. And he reframes what boards should actually measure, shifting from plan revisions …

April 28, 202617 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #325: The Polycrisis Playbook: Why Leaders Must Be Ready for Everything, Everywhere, All at Once

Your business continuity program was built for one crisis at a time. That world is gone. In Episode 325 of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryan Strawser of Bryghtpath unpacks the polycrisis and why concurrent, compounding crises break the programs most organizations rely on. Bryan walks through the ten threats driving the polycrisis era and the four places where legacy programs fail under concurrent stress. He introduces the four capabilities every resilience leader needs to build next: Sense, Decide, Respond, and Recover and Learn. He closes with a four-phase roadmap to move from a single-scenario program to a real operating model. …

April 20, 20264 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #324 - Why Performative Leadership Destroys Crisis Response

Bryan Strawser challenges a common but damaging leadership instinct: the urge for executives to take over and micromanage during a crisis. He explains that this kind of performative leadership creates bottlenecks, slows decision-making, and undermines the expertise of the crisis team when speed and clarity matter most. Strawser emphasizes that effective crisis leadership requires nuance—balancing time in the weeds with a strategic, enterprise-wide perspective. Leaders must resist ego-driven behavior, trust their trained teams, and focus on aligning the organization, communicating effectively, and protecting long-term business outcomes. The episode underscores a critical truth: if leaders cannot trust their teams to manage …

April 13, 20267 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #323: The Fog of War

In Episode #323: The Fog of War, Bryan Strawser explores the reality leaders face in the first moments of a crisis—when information is incomplete, conflicting, or entirely absent. Drawing on his experience during the Boston Marathon manhunt, he emphasizes that waiting for perfect information is a losing strategy; leaders must act decisively based on what they know while clearly acknowledging what they do not. The episode introduces a practical decision-making framework grounded in “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and the critical risk of “unknown unknowns.” Strawser reinforces that silence is not neutral—it is a decision that creates space for others to …

February 23, 20267 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #322: Six Weeks into 2026

Six weeks into 2026 is the right moment to pause and assess whether your resilience program is aligned with how your organization is actually operating today. In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryan Strawser challenges leaders to revalidate their risk landscape, critical process priorities, and crisis readiness before the year accelerates. Early-year course correction is far easier than mid-year crisis recovery. Bryan outlines the key questions every resilience leader should be asking now, from whether your Business Impact Analysis still reflects reality to whether your exercise calendar targets enterprise-level risk. He also explores how cyber threats, geopolitical instability, …

December 29, 20255 min

Managing Uncertainty Podcast – Episode #321: From Risk to Reach - Building Business-Fluent Leaders in Resilience

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryan Strawser explores how Chief Risk Officers and resilience leaders can develop the next generation of risk talent—by focusing on business fluency as a core leadership capability. As the risk function continues to evolve, technical excellence alone is no longer enough. The most effective leaders are those who can translate risk into strategic advantage and influence decisions at the highest levels. Bryan unpacks insights from a recent McKinsey article and ties them to Bryghtpath’s own white paper, The Strategic Edge: Wielding Influence as a Resilience Leader. He shares practical strategies for cultivating …