{"id":85151,"date":"2026-10-14T16:20:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T20:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/?p=85151"},"modified":"2026-11-01T16:30:24","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T21:30:24","slug":"decision-making-agility-as-the-remedy-for-businesses-facing-these-troubled-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/decision-making-agility-as-the-remedy-for-businesses-facing-these-troubled-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Decision-Making Agility as the Remedy for Businesses Facing These Troubled Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Business-world analyses never stop making us anxious. After explaining to us in the 1980s that the world had entered the \u201cVUCA\u201d era (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), we have recently tipped over into the \u201cBANI\u201d era, characterized by Brittleness, Anxiety, Non-linearity and Incomprehensibility. Phew\u2026 Here is how to behave in such times.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Trumpian era, made up of ill-timed tariffs, an \u201cabsurd\u201d trade war and unusual military aggression (e.g., the capture of Maduro), the macroeconomic framework of analysis proposed by futurist author Jamais Cascio<\/a> in April 2020 on Medium sounds painfully true today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to him, the criteria of volatility or complexity specific to the \u201cVUCA\u201d framework have become insufficient \u201clenses\u201d for explaining today\u2019s world. The world is not simply unstable, it is chaotic. The course of events is not simply \u201chard to predict,\u201d it is entirely \u201cunpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nurturing trust and decision-making agility<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jos\u00e9e Marcotte, president of \u00c9mergence, addressed the subject during a talk on decision-making agility at last May\u2019s Forum RH PME (an HR forum for small and medium-sized businesses):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThis complexity didn\u2019t exist before,\u201d argues the consultant. \u201cIt is pushing us today to completely rethink our decision-making chains to gain speed and agility. To be sustainable, our businesses must completely transform.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The consultant advocates a decentralized management model in which decisions are made \u201con the ground\u201d rather than constantly moving up to the top of the hierarchical pyramid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe basic principle is: \u2018whoever knows, does, and whoever does, knows.\u2019 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,\u201d she assures.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To deal with a \u201cBANI\u201d environment, Jos\u00e9e 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cYou take all of your organizational needs and convert them into roles. These roles don\u2019t belong to individuals,\u201d she explains. \u201cA 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Easy to say on paper. But on the ground, managers will have to rethink their practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe 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\u2019t necessarily natural,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In return, the company\u2019s leadership must give its team a clear mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That is how to emerge from the \u201cdecision paralysis\u201d into which the BANI business environment has plunged many small and medium-sized businesses in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business-world analyses never stop making us anxious. After explaining to us in the 1980s that the world had entered the \u201cVUCA\u201d era (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), we have recently tipped over into the \u201cBANI\u201d era, characterized by Brittleness, Anxiety, Non-linearity and Incomprehensibility. Phew\u2026 Here is how to behave in such times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":85152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-caroussel","category-hr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85153,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85151\/revisions\/85153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isarta.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}