Burnout, uncertainty, and working in a world that won't sit still

Many of us were trained to believe that better plans, clearer metrics, and stronger accountability would produce better outcomes.

Yet many of the challenges we face today seem increasingly resistant to these approaches. Organizational culture, social change, collaboration, and leadership rarely unfold in predictable ways. Despite our best efforts, outcomes often remain uncertain, relationships become strained, and the pressure to deliver results can leave us exhausted.

What if the exhaustion so many people are carrying is not simply the result of doing too much or attending too little to our wellbeing?

What if it is also a signal that the assumptions we were taught about how change happens no longer match the realities we are trying to navigate?

This interactive online conversation invites participants to explore their own experiences of fatigue, frustration, uncertainty, and responsibility through story and reflection. Together, we will examine what these experiences may reveal about the increasingly complex environments in which we work and live.

Rather than offering techniques for managing burnout, the session will explore deeper questions about tensions underneath it: What happens when our desire for certainty meets a world that resists prediction? What becomes possible when we shift from control toward learning, from certainty toward curiosity, and from managing change toward participating in it?

Hosts

Jason Ferenczi is a facilitator, writer, and organizational consultant whose work sits at the crossroads of governance, history, relationship, and social change. Having spent much of his career in philanthropy, higher education, and nonprofit leadership, Jason is particularly interested in the ways people experience complexity in practice—through fatigue, conflict, uncertainty, memory, and the challenge of acting responsibly in situations that refuse easy solutions.

Luísa Costa works at the boundary between what can be said and what can only be felt. As an Art Therapist and Visual Facilitator, she brings expressive arts into spaces where people are navigating complexity, exhaustion, and change — not to resolve those experiences, but to help them become legible. Her practice draws on art therapy, somatic work, Tai Ji, and visual facilitation, holding the belief that the body, the hand, and the image often reveal what the mind is still trying to formulate. She works with individuals, groups, and organisations who are willing to slow down long enough to make sense of what needs to emerge.

Pedro Portela works at the intersection of complexity science, leadership, and organizational change. Drawing on decades of experience supporting organizations, networks, and social change initiatives across multiple sectors and countries, Pedro helps people make sense of uncertainty without reducing it to simplistic answers. His work explores what contemporary science can teach us about leadership, collaboration, and navigating a world that is increasingly difficult to predict or control.  

Date and Time: July 14th 2026 at 3PM GMT
Online