As marketing experts know well , naming , i.e. the art of giving things the right name, is almost everything. It applies to all fields, including the one dedicated to designing the economic and social context and predicting its developments. If for many years we have been talking about the VUCA world, for some time now the definition has been replaced by that of BANI environments .
To understand what BANI environments are, it is necessary to take a step back. VUCA and BANI are two acronyms that attempt to interpret modernity in order to provide organizations, and above all, their managers, with an appropriate interpretative paradigm with which to manage the scenarios they face . Both are born within the discipline of 'futures studies ', which attempt to outline possible horizons and give order to the indistinct flow of events.
In American academies in particular, it is a very popular discipline, capable of introducing terms into the international debate that then go viral. This is what happened with VUCA and is happening now uruguay whatsapp data with BANI. In general, both acronyms point to an increase in the complexity of the time in which we find ourselves compared to previous times. The BANI world is the evolution of VUCA , following historical events such as the pandemic or new armed conflicts.
Differences between VUCA and BANI environments
The VUCA model ( Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity ) was coined in 1985 by economists Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, who explained it in their book Leaders. The strategies for taking charge . The fundamental premise of the two authors is that the challenges posed by various external factors, summarized in the four terms that make up the concept, require management and leadership to handle companies with appropriate tools and methodologies that take into account the impact of these factors on their organizations.
The theory's fortune comes from when, in the early 1990s, it was adopted by the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, facing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. In fact, it was necessary to respond to a very different situation from the previous one. A situation in which, precisely, volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity represented the keys to better contextualize it.
The pandemic has made the VUCA world obsolete. This is why, in 2020, the 'futurist' Jamais Cascio launched a new acronym through the publication Facing the age of chaos , that of BANI, that is: Brittle , Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible . The two visions are not necessarily opposed, but the preference for one or the other also determines the orientation towards certain transversal competences and skills rather than others.
In a VUCA world, for example, an approach is needed that takes into account the possibilities of innovation without exposing oneself too much to its consequences in case the innovation turns out to be a dead end. Openness to experimentation should not lead to false certainties . Indeed, leaders should encourage it with a culture that does not blame employees in case of failure. Certain attitudes help to put this mindset into practice, such as the ability to reformulate problems and challenges once new information is received, or to draw general lessons applicable to the context in which one operates by analysing other sectors.
In the VUCA world, psychological and physical self-awareness is a state that facilitates decision-making in the midst of strong instability and variability of the surrounding landscape. And this is true both for employees and, even more so, for managers who are called upon to give great importance to the well-being of their collaborators in order to stimulate their satisfaction and productivity.
Finally, one should not underestimate the propensity to accept change as a constant in working life and not only, something that implies a continuous availability to learn new things, giving priority to what is necessary in a world where time is one of the most precious assets.