This is a commentary and comments are welcome by email to info@eaa.co.ke

From VUCA TO BANI: 

The acronym VUCA came to the fore in the world of business around the turn of the millennium and became extremely relevant during the financial crisis of 2008.  It was referred to in a 1985 book “Leaders, The Strategies for Taking Charge” by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanis.  However, it was also seen extensively during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989 when the American military used it to analyse the new order post the end of the Cold War.  The Covid-19 pandemic also saw VUCA being utilised by businesses.

How did business use VUCA?  Firstly, as a means “for organisations to advance” and secondly using “the skillset needed to address VUCA is agility: the ability to quickly learn, adapt, change and succeed in a highly turbulent environment” according to the University of Cambridge.

Epam Solutions Hub in an article published in November 2023, pointed to “3 Essential VUCA Leadership Skills” being:

• Agility and Adaptability: effectively adapting to a rapidly changing environment.
• Strategic Thinking and Decision-Making: requiring analytical skills to enable strategic thinking – both short and long term – to ensure sound decision making.
• Resilience: dealing with problems and being able to “adapt and thrive”.

One could therefore argue that these are essential in today’s world with significant changes in geopolitics and a global economy that is largely performing below par.

According to Waltraud Glaeser, an expert on the subject, “VUCA is more than a buzzword!  It is a way of thinking and approaching solutions to the problems of our digital and dynamic world” (see vuca-world.org).  But is VUCA now a concept of the past?

The transition to BANI

BANI was thought up by Jamias Casico, anthropologist, author and futurologist.  In his first article on the subject, he said “Situations in which conditions aren’t simply unstable, they’re chaotic.  In which outcomes aren’t simply hard to foresee, they’re completely unpredictable.  Or, to use the particular language of these frameworks, situations where what happens isn’t simply ambiguous, it’s incomprehensible” according to LLYC.

So, what does BANI stand for?

B: Brittle – in relation to systems and structures which may seem strong but are susceptible to sudden breakdown.  The global village concept means that something happening across the world will eventually impact our own systems and structures with unexpected disruptions.

A: Anxious – the fear that an organisation’s decision-making process can become paralysed.  The sheer magnitude of data and information that is available today makes us anxious – perhaps a live example is the Gen Z uprising in Kenya, where the other generations are constantly seeking news, of which there is a never ending stream, on what next and how it will affect us.

N: Non-linear – in effect the unpredictable and disproportionate relationships between cause and effects.  A prime example was a virus that originated in China and brought the entire world to its knees.  In essence Non-linear is “embracing the unpredictable nature of modern challenges”.

I: Incomprehensible – basically this suggests that not all problems have an answer and a plethora of information and data makes it difficult to understand.  As one can’t understand it is probably best to treat it as incomprehensible and move on.

According to VUCA-World, BANI “helps to better understand and locate their (VUCA’s) effects and what they do to individuals and organisations”.

Why the shift

Arguably, the world remains volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous; so why would the concept be losing ground and facing replacement by BANI?  The short answer could be that in fact both concepts are relevant today with BANI perhaps being more forward looking.  VUCA too continues to be relevant but what is just as clear is that the world is becoming brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible.

The world is definitely looking and feeling brittle as we deal with Climate Change, the ever-changing technology, Artificial Intelligence and a move away from a global village with more inward looking by nations.  We are faced with different challenges that VUCA did not, or rather could not, comprehend all those years ago.

Stefan Dieffenbacher in an article in Digital Leadership (https://digitalleadership.com/blog/bani-world/) describes a world in which “systems are fragile, people are anxious due to uncertainty, cause-and-effect relationships are non-linear, and complexity can be overwhelming”.

Mr Dieffenbacher points to key factors for leaders that are the requirement to be “adaptable, resilient, and transparent in decision-making”.  Being brittle can be addressed by flexibility and resilience and dealing with anxious team members needs clarity, empathy and a culture shift.  Non-linear issues need “embracing adaptability and promoting innovative thinking” and transparency is critical in dealing with the incomprehensibility we face; and “collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning are essential in navigating a BANI world”.

He goes on to say that proactiveness will be the order of the day.

The future

So, what does the future hold?  Without a crystal ball it is perhaps difficult to answer that question.  The only certainty is that our world, and more so our business environments, will continue to evolve on an almost daily basis.  Brittleness seems to be the only constant at the moment bringing with it anxiety, non-linearity and more and more incomprehensibility.  Unfortunately, this is a given and we as business leaders will need to adapt and be resilient.

No doubt BANI will be overtaken by a different thinking and there already is talk of RUPT – Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical and Tangled, which is intended to reach (new) Reality, Understanding, (new) Possibilities and Transparency (Centre for Creative Leadership)!  But that’s a story for another day!

This is a commentary and comments are welcome by email to info@eaa.co.ke