VUCA and BANI World
By: Pedro Overbeck
Tags: Future Of Work, Marketing, Bani World, Vuca World

The reality in which we live means that we have to be completely connected with trends and prepared to deal with ever greater and more intriguing challenges. For example, the current pandemic has put urgency on everything and made us realize that we are, in fact, vulnerable.

From the US military to the business world

First of all, it should be explained that the term VUCA, until then was anything but what it actually meant. After all, it is an acronym that means Volatile, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguous. You can know the origin of this term here if you want to read more about it.

The American Army, more specifically the US Army War College developed it to be able to draw scenarios and identify trends of a new world that was being designed. Subsequently, the business world adopted it to build its planning and execution standards.

Understanding the VUCA World

Volatile

The market being volatile and dynamic doesn’t seem something new to you, correct? Nobody does business like they did years ago. In the same way, no company makes annual plans without planning a series of revisions. If you are in the market and you don’t notice this volatility you are probably having a lot of trouble keeping yourself balanced.

Uncertainty

It is a typical reality of the time. So, here it’s up to the film to understand what the ’80s were like. Cold war, tensions, new technologies, everything could happen. Few moments were so uncertain. Likewise, even with the end of the Cold War, the tensions in the world continue all the time and the scenario continues to be unpredictable.

Complexity

It is almost self-explanatory. After all, in a scenario of Volatility and Uncertainties how not to consider it complex? The world was being reinvented and much of what made sense stopped doing it and vice-versa.

Besides, has it changed by any chance? Of course not. First of all, we could say that the complexity of the current business market has reached a very high level and has become sophisticated. So we no longer have how to deal as generalists. In short, all the problems to be faced need tailored approaches.

Ambiguous

So it is just a reflection of everything that has been explained so far. The reality of the business world has changed a lot in the last 10 years and ambiguity is beginning to be normal, especially in terms of decision making. The right and wrong start to be questioned because you have different possible paths to follow.

The big question is that the current dynamic does not allow absolute truths. Things like “in a winning team you don’t change” are no longer acceptable. In the same way, not seeing clearly the state of things or even misunderstanding the relationships of cause and effect can generate big problems.

From VUCA World to BANI World

The term VUCA has been used on a larger scale since 2010 and our dynamic times already have a substitute for it. Experts say it’s time for the BANI world. Yeah, you who may not even have understood one, are already being introduced to the other. And the scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic has made these acronyms much more meaningful.

The time has come to take the next step towards understanding what the world will be like from now on. The way to do business in a pandemic scenario and after it is already changing. Yes, we know that the pandemic doesn’t seem to want to end, but we will be able to tame it.

Curiously, Jamais Cascio, still in 2018, so before the current pandemic, suggested that we were not living in the VUCA World but in the BANI World (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible).

And this 2020, with its pandemic in the lap, fell like a glove. After it's easy to understand why feeling fragile and anxious in front of a world that increasingly points to a nonlinear and incomprehensible future is not something so strange, is it?

Fragile

Fragility is not a condition for ceasing to exist. It is the lack of capacity to endure something, to resist failure. It may seem philosophical, and maybe it is, but someone very rich who depends on a single source of income, even being very rich, is fragile. After all, a simple change in the regulatory system or a pandemic like COVID-19 can destroy a millionaire business.

After all, you know Airbnb, don’t you? According to its founder, Brian Chesky, 12 years of the company were almost destroyed by 6 weeks of a pandemic. Despite Airbnb was a successful business, was it or wasn’t it fragile?

Anxious

The anxiety approach is almost as common as the depression approach. Probably the last similar scenario happened in World War II over 80 years ago.

Using the same Airbnb as an example, its founder sentenced about the tourism market:

“Nobody knows what it will be like, but I think we’ll see a redistribution of the places you travel to.”

Despite this, Airbnb managed to recover by completely restructuring the company and reinventing its way of doing business. Few can do that, good to say.

Moreover, the role of the media in this scenario is determining. Is there anything that stimulates anxiety and depression as much as our news?

Anxiety to make wrong decisions cannot be stronger than the need to make decisions. And not making decisions can be even more dangerous.

Taming this anxiety and not letting yourself be controlled by it is perhaps the most important characteristic for a professional today.

Non-Linear

The Chaos Theory and its butterfly effect, thus defined by its creator Edward Lorenz, “as if the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil would, sometime later, cause a tornado in Texas” explains much about this non-linearity of the world.

The effect that small decisions can have on your life or business is becoming more visible and latent every day. As well, the amount of interconnections you have causes everything to interfere positively or negatively with your goals.

The entirely digital world makes that, for example, a single hacker can cause damages that affect thousands, millions, or even billions of people. And that without even having to leave home, right?

The world spends trillions of dollars identifying potential terrorist actions. Many of them cost virtually nothing to those who want to do them, but they can generate disasters worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic began in China and spread in a way never before seen.

More than 1.7 million people died. Thousands of companies were decimated in a domino effect around the world. Do you want a better example of non-linearity than this?

Incomprehensible

When we talked about the VUCA world, we analyzed the C of complexity. Now we can easily understand why many complex things are still incomprehensible to most people. This is the so-called BANI World. Can you answer how an algorithm can compress a photo and reduce its size by 80%? If you know, congratulations.

Surely the vast majority has no idea. But this same majority can know how to run the tool that does this service. Some of us use the computer and its software magnificently but have no idea what makes it work that way. And do you understand, for example, the concept and structure behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies?

Your role in the BANI world

The digital world and its emerging technologies are definitely moving towards Artificial Intelligence. We have not even completely mastered our brain’s capacity and are already starting to implement other intelligence. And what is left for most of us? Their first impulse was to answer that we have to seek to understand everything? I feel that this option could cause a lot of frustration. There is no way to do it.

What will really fall to us is to adapt and continue believing that Darwin was completely right. It’s not about the strongest, it’s about who adapts best and fastest. The transition from the VUCA World to the BANI World does not require great changes in terms of learning. It is much more adjustment, balance, and possibly a change of priorities.

The first thing we really need to learn is that demands change all the time and that adapting is the only way to keep our heads out of the water. In a fragile, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible world, skills and intelligence continue to be determinant but the development of so-called soft skills is a great differential. Among the many that exist, I believe that some are preponderant:

Effective Communication

Empathy

Efficient Writing

Collaboration

Flexibility and Resilience

Creative Thinking

Conclusion

First, the list above has a logic to exist. After all, to get around the fragility we need to be resilient and capable. To master anxiety, we need empathy and the ability to share our fears and anxieties. Understanding scenarios and adapting quickly will allow you to navigate better in a nonlinear world. To deal with the incomprehensible we need to develop our attention and intuition a lot.

The world VUCA and the world BANI are not fiction. They are just frameworks that help you understand the scenario you have to act. The search must be for self-knowledge and for understanding your role in this structure. Thus, you will be able to know precisely what to do to achieve your goals having clarity of why it will not be easy. But this last part, we already knew, right?