I have the distinct privilege of coaching some of the most successful business and organizational leaders in the world. And what I keep seeing is that from medicine to engineering to education and business at every rung of the ladder, people are grappling with great uncertainty.

A couple of weeks ago I was working with a leader of a Fortune 50 company with responsibility for over 100,000 employees. He pronounced “This is the toughest global environment I have experienced in 25 years.” And whether you are living through these times from the top perch of a corporate giant or as part of a team on the ground or as an entrepreneur or freshly-minted college graduate, the world will continue to be reshaped, reorganized and remade in ways that can no longer be predicted with any real confidence.

Unfortunately when times are scary, our natural tendency is to hunker down and reinforce the fortresses we’ve been building to protect ourselves. But in this new world, one of the most dangerous things you can do is to hide out and sit tight waiting for things to blow over because mostly they won’t. Instead each person, each business and each organization must choose to step up and out into an arena that will continue to be full of flux, instability and uncertainty.

Here are a few ways to set yourself up to win in these times: