Business-world analyses never stop making us anxious. After explaining to us in the 1980s that the world had entered the “VUCA” era (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), we have recently tipped over into the “BANI” era, characterized by Brittleness, Anxiety, Non-linearity and Incomprehensibility. Phew… Here is how to behave in such times.
In the Trumpian era, made up of ill-timed tariffs, an “absurd” trade war and unusual military aggression (e.g., the capture of Maduro), the macroeconomic framework of analysis proposed by futurist author Jamais Cascio in April 2020 on Medium sounds painfully true today:
“We are in an age of chaos, a time that intensely, almost violently, rejects all structure. It is not simple instability; it is a reality that seems to actively resist efforts to understand the underlying fabric of what is really going on.”
According to him, the criteria of volatility or complexity specific to the “VUCA” framework have become insufficient “lenses” for explaining today’s world. The world is not simply unstable, it is chaotic. The course of events is not simply “hard to predict,” it is entirely “unpredictable.”
Nurturing trust and decision-making agility
Josée Marcotte, president of Émergence, addressed the subject during a talk on decision-making agility at last May’s Forum RH PME (an HR forum for small and medium-sized businesses):
“This complexity didn’t exist before,” argues the consultant. “It is pushing us today to completely rethink our decision-making chains to gain speed and agility. To be sustainable, our businesses must completely transform.”
The consultant advocates a decentralized management model in which decisions are made “on the ground” rather than constantly moving up to the top of the hierarchical pyramid.
“The basic principle is: ‘whoever knows, does, and whoever does, knows.’ And when we give power to those people, we free up an entire layer of unnecessary decision-making that we really bring back to the right level,” she assures.
To deal with a “BANI” environment, Josée Marcotte puts forward a management model akin to the liberated company. She proposes viewing an organization as a living body with organs to nourish rather than a machine with interchangeable parts. She proposes moving away from the traditional pyramid structure to adopt a structure of cells and roles that are not attached to single individuals.
“You take all of your organizational needs and convert them into roles. These roles don’t belong to individuals,” she explains. “A person can embody several roles depending on their skills. It opens up a whole world of possibilities. Rather than locking people into an immutable, rigid structure, it lets us use them at the best of their skills, their potential and their interests.”
Easy to say on paper. But on the ground, managers will have to rethink their practices.
“The first thing to do is to work on the trust and autonomy of their teams. I let individuals make decisions within the roles that have been well established. I grant the right to make mistakes and I allow them to make decisions without always asking permission. For managers, that takes deep inner work. It isn’t necessarily natural,” she adds.
In return, the company’s leadership must give its team a clear mission.
“We need to produce clarity and alignment. We replace control in our organizations with clarity. The stronger my values are, the more they are communicated, the more people will act accordingly.”
That is how to emerge from the “decision paralysis” into which the BANI business environment has plunged many small and medium-sized businesses in recent months.