How Leaders Can Embrace Transformation in a BANI World

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Good morning, Brian.

Brian
Good morning, Ani. How are you? I'm doing well today, and you?

Ani
I'm very good, thanks.

Brian
It's another week. Love being here on the podcast.

Ani
I love it, too. I look forward to it every week. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, exciting. Yeah.

Brian
Nice.

Ani
We're on episode 81 today, and we're talking about something that is all the buzz recently. It's been around for a little while now, but it's really picking up steam out there, talking about the BANI World. The BANI World. We're really excited about this because it's the Brian and Ani world, obviously. No.

Brian
Just take the R out of it, and there you go. The BANI World. The BANI World. Yeah, right.

Ani
You may not have heard of this, but it's like a term floating around in the business space, and more and more people are finding out about this conceptualization.

Brian
Yeah. An American philosopher by the name of Jamais Cascio came up with this concept of the world feeling a brittle and anxious and nonlinear and incomprehensible. But before we talk about that, there was actually a model, and I don't know who came up with this, preceding Cascio's work that they called the VUCA world.

Ani
I'm curious, if you mind answering this question, have we been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years where we talk about this conceptualization of how the world is right now, or is the VUCA thing the first time? Do you know where this came from?

Brian
No, I doubt it's the first time because as humans, we're meaning-making creatures, right? We're always making meaning. We're always trying to find ways to understand the world that we live in. And communicate about it. We're coming up with models to do that.

Ani
Because I hadn't heard of anything before VUCA.

Brian
Yeah. I don't know. Maybe it was a model in business or the organizational world before that.

Ani
Sure. Vuca had been happening for quite some time before.

Brian
People talk about the world as being a VUCA world. Why don't we just talk about that?

Ani
For a long time before this BANI, BANI thing came around.

Brian
Yeah, started. What's the VUCA world about? Then we'll go into this BANI idea. VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, which when you transition into BANI, it definitely sounds like an evolution of it. It doesn't sound like it's a complete discarding of the VUCA framework. It just sounds like what Cascio is saying is that the world has become more of those VUCA things, so let's rename them as something else. To me, it sounds like an evolution. An evolution, yeah. Because volatility is really about the speed of change, like how fast things are changing. The idea of uncertainty is really what it sounds like. It's uncertain. We don't know what's going to happen next. We can't really predict what's going to happen next thing. Complexity refers the idea of it's just complex. There's a lot of things going on at the same time, a lot of inter-reactability between things that are happening in the world. Things are just highly complex. Again, Cascio started coming out with his framework about, well, probably this is 2025, three years ago, four years ago.

Ani
It was after COVID time, wasn't it?

Brian
Yeah, we actually did a series of LinkedIn Live on BANI framework, and we did it about two or three years ago. I went back and looked. That's when we were first introduced to it. It might have been around a little bit.

Ani
Yeah, I think it was fairly new.

Brian
Then the A in VUCA is ambiguity, which really it just refers to a lack of clarity of we're not clear about what's going on, or clear about what's happening, or how do we communicate clarity, all those kinds of things. What Cascio is saying is that in our current world, the VUCA framework is outdated. It doesn't clearly describe how much faster things are happening and changing right now, how complex they really, really are, how incredibly uncertain things are, and how ambiguous things are. So he refrained that, the idea of today's world actually feels more brittle. So not just volatile, but actually brittle.

Ani
Yeah, I can see that. I mean, a lot of organizational leaders just feel like things could just completely break. And more people are leaving than ever before. And there's all this touchiness, right? Like walking on eggshells feeling.

Brian
Exactly. Yeah. And decisions in organizations create, again, massive results that are unexpected because it feels like it's very brittle, like things are easily broken. Yeah. And so that feels like it's happening. And then we transition this idea of feeling anxious.

Ani
Well, I think that's a hallmark of our time for sure. You know me, I don't know what the statistics are. The anxiety has not gone anywhere, and it just keeps growing. The amount of anxiety people are feeling all over the place, it's rampant. I hear about it all the time.

Brian
When you think about that, again, the transition from in the VUCA world, uncertainty, and that transitions into anxious in the BANI world. The way I think about those is uncertainty is an objective thing. Things are uncertain.

Ani
But I'm anxious.

Brian
But anxious is more of a subjective thing. Because the world can't be anxious. I'm anxious. The world can be uncertain. Sure. There's an interesting object-subject relationship relationship between those two words in my experience. It almost feels like to me when we think about the BANI world that we're actually more internalizing, we're internalizing more what's going on uncertainty-wise in the world, creating anxiousness.

Ani
Yeah, because you might even say people are anxious, maybe even because of uncertainty. But you're right, there's some internalization that happens, bringing it into anxiety. That's interesting.

Brian
Yeah, it's interesting. Then we transition from complexity in the VUCA world into a nonlinear in the BANI world.

Ani
I experience this nonlinear way that people view the world a lot when I'm talking with clients and people and teams that we're working with. Because one of the things that comes up is this... Nonlinear is such a great word to describe it. It really is a great word. It's a fantastic... I don't understand. It should be A to Z or A to D, but it didn't go like that. One of the reasons I think that's exciting is because it really starts to highlight for us the quantum nature of our world. Which to me makes more sense almost as we've studied it so much through the years, that to me, that nonlinear thing is like, well, yes, that's how it works as you embrace the nature of the quantum field. But again, that nonlinear is such a great word, and I think it describes the anxiety that people feel. It leads to the nature of the anxiety that people feel when they're in that.

Brian
Yeah. Same thing when I think about complex and nonlinear, to me, complex feels very static. I could look at something and be like, Oh, that's pretty complex. I can look at a painting or a drawing or something, and or a graph or something, Oh, that's pretty complex. But nonlinear has an element of movement associated with it.

Ani
It does, yeah. Almost like- 

Brian
To have something nonlinear, it means that complexity is in motion. It's not just things are complex, but they are complex, but they're also not linearly affecting one another. Because that complexity, like you said, the quantum field, one particle affects all the particles simultaneously. It's not a linear effect. It's almost like putting this complexity in motion, which feels very true to me in today's worldscape that things are very dynamic. Things are always dynamically happening because of our level of connectivity, our level of brittleness, our level of hypervigilance that goes along with anxiety. It creates these nonlinear impacts that just affect themselves out everywhere.

Ani
I think complexity feels like this thing we might be able to tackle. It's hard and it's complex, but we can figure it out. Whereas nonlinear has this 'I don't know what to do with it' idea baked into it, I think.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Then that last term, ambiguity, transitioning into being incomprehensible. So ambiguity to me, feels fuzzy. It feels ambiguous, but I can make something out about it. There's something there. I'm not totally crystal clear on what it is, but I can make some determinations about it, where the idea of being incomprehensible means that I have no freaking idea how to relate to this thing.

Ani
It almost attaches more from it, I think. Then the ambiguity, like you said, I can see some of it, but it doesn't feel completely detached. If anything, it feels like I'm in it a lot more.

Brian
I'm in it, but I don't know how to relate to it. I don't even know how to describe how I don't relate to it.

Ani
One of the things that we think about when we think about this BANI world is it just sounds exactly like a transformational experience to us. We think it's a fantastic way to conceptualize it, actually, so you can do something with it. I mean, that's so important to me because we can talk about all these philosophy things, and it could be really interesting, but at the end of the day, what are you going to do with it so it can help people? I think conceptualizing this as, whoa, this is actually signs and symptoms of a transformational experience. What if that's what this is? All of a sudden, it gives us an opportunity to get practical, do something, and really provide service.

Brian
When I think about, I agree 100%, Ani, when we're experiencing these signs of being in the BANI world, brittleness, anxiousness, nonlinear, incomprehensibility. For me, they're all flags for transformation. That transformation is afoot, that something's happening, that change is occurring. At the same time, when we look at each one of these elements, I think it's important how we manage through that transformation. That's also really, really important because we could just spend a whole bunch of time trying to, quote, unquote, fix the symptoms associated with the brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible. But that doesn't necessarily guarantee we're going to have... It actually guarantees we're not going to have a transformation, by the way. So you flip it the other way around. And at the same time, if we recognize that the BANI experience is the hallmark signs of a transformation, then what you want to be able to do as a leader is to not seek help to shore up the symptoms of the problem, but to seek help from professionals who know about transformation. You have to have a guide or consultants, coaches to help you actually move all the way through the transformation in a way that will the most safely get you into the change.

Brian
Because you can actually move through transformations with no guardrails and end up just completely destroying everything. That's true. When we think about the idea of brittle, things are going to break easily. If that's a part of the feature of the world right now, then that's a part of the feature of the world. Things break easily. If we know things are going to break easily, what safety measures can we put in place so that when things do break easily- Because they're going to. They're going to, we already have a plan in place. We already, I'm going to say that again, already have a preconceived plan in place of what we're to do when they do break.

Ani
Yeah. I love how you said providing safety and looking at that to bolster the whole thing because it's going to happen. Yeah.

Brian
Because I think what would be irresponsible in leadership is to just say, We got to change the thing, so let's just break it, and then we'll figure out what to do.

Ani
Or hope it doesn't break.

Brian
Right. But I think in today's, most people are just breaking things. I think they're like, This isn't changing. It's got to change systemically. We've got to do something. So there's just a lot of breaking going on, but not with a lot of forethought about what are we actually going to do after this breaks.

Ani
There's all of these ideas about how fast things are transforming now that I agree with you because we're seeing quite a bit of this, like breaking and discarding without taking care of the wake. It doesn't have to take a lot of time. It's not like we're talking about it's going to stall everything. But care around the brittleness and the breaking is so important.

Brian
Yeah. I can almost guarantee that's the reason people feel anxious. The reason people feel anxious is because they have a sense that things are going to break, but there's actually no plan around how that breaking is going to be managed.

Ani
It's the idea around anxiety is this fear of the future circumstances.

Brian
So the more brittle it feels and the less safety nets it feels like are around us, the more likely that we're going to feel anxious.

Ani
And what if you're just trying to fix the anxiety? Then you're symptom chasing.

Brian
Yeah, symptom chasing. You have to understand that those sensations of anxiety, by the way, those are a part of a transformation. Okay.

Ani
I got to say something I've seen on social media for a few days now, it's come up, and I'm just going to take it as a cue to say something today about this. I have heard a few times over about how we can transform anxiety into excitement, and I just got to call this one for a second. One of the benefits of working from a sensation-based approach is that we are getting all of the information to be able to make decisions. If we just take anxiety and just make it mean, excitement, it very well may not be about excitement. There might be more information for us to gather within our system so we can use all of our capacities, including our intuition, including tapping into collective consciousness, to be able to really see what's actually going on? Because it might not always be excitement. Really bothered me when I heard that because I think it's very disempowering to just tell somebody who's anxious, well, why don't you transform that into excitement? Because it's not always what it means.

Brian
Correct. Yeah. And again, you're not getting the information that's actually informing someone that they're judging something as being anxiety. Because- Yeah.

Ani
You're just reframing on top of who knows what root causes.

Brian
It feels to me like one of those things we talk about in terms of the toxic positivity. Yeah, totally. It feels like a ton of a toxic positivity moment. And so we're not saying that by going through a process that at times you can't transform anxiety into something that feels like excitement. For sure, but do it. But there's a transformational process that has to happen. It's not just to decide to do it.

Ani
Do it based on all the information, not just partial information. If you don't know what's going on in there around the sensations and the beliefs and the stories and the narratives and all that stuff, then It might be a cause for an alarm that you're ignoring or something. It might be really important information that you're passing up. Yeah. So thanks for that little soapbox. Sure. I was wondering why that kept popping into my social media feed this week.

Brian
Yeah, there it is. So let's go on a nonlinear now. This is really interesting. As a leader, I think now, and so we're saying it now, so hopefully after this point, it'll be like, Oh, it's no longer naive to think, but it is naive to think that as a leader, when I make a decision, it's only going to affect one other thing. It's going to affect everything. It's going to affect everything.

Ani
Everything. This is one of the reasons why we believe that, BANI world or not, that leaders should have strategic advisors who are helping them, them personally do their own transformational work when they're looking at transforming their organizations, their companies, their teams. Because everything is connected to everything. It's like our nervous system.

Brian
Instantaneously now. Instantaneously.

Ani
Our nervous system is connected to everything. You were in a class recently talking about this. I wish I could remember exactly what it was. Maybe you do. But you were talking about how our nervous system is connected to all things and the way you were describing it, it made perfect sense. I was like, Yeah, it's not just superficial, folks. It's not just superficial, this idea that we're connected to all things.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. If you just think about it from a biological aspect, of course, our nervous system is connected to everything. It's connected to us internally, but our nervous system also extends into the environment. We know that. But if you just think about technology and social media and where we are today, you make a decision and you press a button on your phone and it goes to the whole world. Anybody else with a phone, anybody else is connected to you immediately. That's what we talk about nonlinear. Now, every one of those people are going to feel differently about what you just posted, what you just said. And that's going to create ripple effects throughout the whole... Just look at what's going on in the world right now. It's completely nonlinear to think that one person makes one decision or does one thing and only affects one area is completely naive right now. I would actually say it's ignorant. So as leaders, we have to understand that every decision we make is going to have ripple effect in all directions. We have to be able to plan for that. And that's because everything feels more brittle.

Brian
Things are less environmentally resilient. So we make one decision, and it has an effect that is in a brittle system that feels incomprehensible then to people. So let's go on to the last one. It feels like people then have no idea what the heck is going on. They just cannot describe it. They don't know what's happening. They can't relate to what's happening because things are changing so fast, and they feel really out of control.

Ani
Yes. Again, as a part of a transformational process, this makes perfect sense because we're actually pattern-recognizing machines. That's how our brains work. When things are transforming, we don't recognize, and we can't put it in the file folder in our brain because we can't find a file folder. We need to actually work towards creating new patterns, creating new identities, creating new systems and ways of understanding. And that will take a little time, but that's part of the transformation. That's how it works.

Brian
Yeah. And as leaders, it's incumbent upon leaders to take themselves through the transformational processes so that they can lead their organizations and their teams and their people as well.

Ani
Right. Yes. And talk about how it's going. I'm not even talking about sharing your own personal stuff, although you certainly could. But having had the experience is being able to share the journey with people. You can't even describe to your people and relate to your people and figure out systems for your people if you don't have an idea of what it's like for yourself. Correct. Yeah, Once you have an idea of what it's like, you have... And again, I'm not saying you got to share all your personal stuff, but you know what walking through the transformation is like. It's one of the reasons why when we do our Somatic Coach professional program, it's so powerful because the coaches, for themselves, through the process of a number of months, walk through their own transformational journey so that... I mean, even if they learn none of the tools, which, of course, they will, at the end, they can go to their clients, I get it. I see you. I see where you are, and this is part of it. But you don't know unless you've been through it.

Brian
Yeah. You have to be able to hold that space for the transformation. A 100%. And do it in a way where it's filled with recognition for what a person going through transformation is experiencing. And empowerment. Empowering them through it.

Ani
You can really empower people when you've walked through the process. But otherwise, you can get messed up in it because you don't really trust the process because you haven't been through the process. Sure. Yeah. So how can you trust them when you don't trust yourself?

Brian
Exactly. So really to summarize our conversation about the BANI world, brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible, is that that is a framework that is being talked about in a way that describes our current culture that we live within the world. All those things are likely true and reflected back in a certain degree. I think we've we talked about that. Talked about how the world is changing and transforming more into a dynamic, instead of just a conceptualized framework, this is actually a dynamic living framework that people are experiencing. We're going through transformation cycles more quickly. Transformation happens more readily nowadays. We can spend a lot of time trying to work with the symptoms of the brittle, of the anxious, of the nonlinear, of the incomprehensible. Or you can work with people who are skilled at helping you to move through a transformation in a way. Or on the other side of it, you become the person, the leader, who can then guide other people through that transformation as well.

Ani
Yeah. Actually, evolve through the transformation. Yes. It just brings me back to that famous Einstein quote, Brian, about you can't change a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it. And the most ideal situation when you go through a transformation is that on the other side of it, you are actually operating from a higher level of consciousness. Yeah.

Brian
So thanks so much for joining us this week. I hope that this topic was useful for you. Please send us an email. Comment below. Let us know what really stuck with you from this podcast, and we would love to know.

Ani
Yeah. And if there's certain things that are really bothering you about the BANI world, that you're really coming up for you, that you're experiencing, let us know about that, too, because we'd love to address it on a future podcast.

Brian
Cool. Thanks so much for joining us. Bye-bye.