BANI: A leadership model for navigating amidst chaos

Chaos surrounds us. It inhabits our day-to-day lives, the world of the market, and businesses. It multiplies at the speed of innovations. And it distresses us with the chained urgencies of our clientele... 

Is leading a company with medium- or long-term forecasts no longer possible? Where do these increasingly evident feelings come from that reality is unmanageable? One of the most successful responses to these questions was formulated by Jamais Cascio using an acronym: BANI. 

An emotional response to the chaos surrounding us 

Historian, anthropologist, and futurologist, Jamais Cascio is considered one of the great thinkers of today. In 2018, he was invited to give a lecture on chaos, and therein he made this proposal, which has been very successful. Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine shook the world's reality. 

Until these recent events, the management realm used a different acronym: the VUCA environment. This was a term coined in the U.S. military that gained traction in the economy from the 1990s onwards and is used to describe the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of conditions and situations. This approach to facing reality has been very valuable as it has allowed companies and institutions to navigate through difficult times with reasonable ease.

But Cascio felt, even before the health crisis, that VUCA was no longer a good formula for facing reality. With a persistent focus on how people react and how we all feel about contemporary reality, he coined the acronym BANI to define what humanity must face today: a reality that is brittle, anxious, non-linear, and feels incomprehensible. 

Four words to explain a chaotic world 

The new BANI reality is described as follows by the author: 

1. Brittle: It's not so much that we are facing fragile structures (we can talk about economic, social, or other types of spaces), but something more unsettling is that, no matter how solid our constructions may seem, they can weaken and collapse very quickly. 
2. Anxious: The prevailing uncertainty generates anxiety when facing the future. When making decisions, it's difficult to predict the consequences: it seems that whatever is chosen could end in disaster. 
3. Non-linear: In the complex world we have constructed, the relationship between cause and effect is not clear: sometimes events originate from decisions made thousands of kilometers away or in a past time. And making decisions like this causes a lot of insecurity. 
4. Incomprehensible: It's not that the new world is incomprehensible, it's that simple answers no longer suffice, and if applied, they're likely to be wrong. 

The response to finding the best path amidst chaos 

In these circumstances, leading any project is difficult, but Cascio himself offers, in the face of the four challenges, four other skills that need to be cultivated to confront the BANI reality: 

• Resilience: Although counterintuitive, one must anticipate the unexpected. As happened in California, where companies better prepared to face earthquakes (it's a region of high seismic activity) had a better response to the pandemic. 
• Empathy: Because when data overwhelms us and everything seems so complex, we find a way to recognize shared humanity. 
• Improvisation: Yes, it must be acknowledged that at times it will be necessary to react in an unforeseen way. And knowing that this improvisation will be more useful than inaction. 
• Intuition: It's also important to accept that we cannot know everything or have all the data before deciding. And therein lies the use of what we call intuition: a knowledge born of experience and speaking to us from the unconscious part of the brain. 

Curiously, in the face of data, technology, and the threat of climate disaster, a more human vision is what strengthens us for the future. 

What do you think? If you want to hear a lengthy interview on this topic with Cascio, there's a video at this link.