When VUCA Isn’t Enough
In recent years, many leaders, teams, and individuals have noticed something strange: even flexible plans break, small problems quickly grow, and things often make no sense. The world doesn’t just feel uncertain—it feels fragile, emotional, and chaotic.
People used to use VUCA Framework to explain change and complexity, but it doesn’t fully reflect today’s intense, fast-moving world anymore.
Futurist Jamais Cascio introduced a new model in 2020: the BANI framework. It goes beyond VUCA and gives us better language and tools for what we’re facing now.
Core Concept – Breaking Down BANI
BANI stands for Brittleness, Anxiety, Non-linearity, and Incomprehensibility. Each one describes a deeper layer of the stress we see in systems, decisions, and behavior.
Brittleness
Brittleness describes situations where things look strong on the surface but can break easily under pressure.
For example, a tightly run global supply chain might operate smoothly for years, but a small disruption—like a shipping delay or factory shutdown—can cause the entire system to fail.
How to respond: To reduce brittleness, organizations need to build capacity (such as backup resources or alternatives) and resilience (the ability to recover quickly from disruption).
