Diagnose the Condition Before Choosing the Response
CIRCA stands for Complex, Insecure, Rapid, Contradictory, Anxious. Five turbulence conditions that frequently stall organizational progress.
Each condition produces similar symptoms: escalations multiply, delivery slows, and the best people disengage. But each requires a distinctly different response.
Misdiagnosis guarantees costly failure.
CIRCA provides the diagnostic precision most frameworks lack.
It reveals what’s actually blocking progress—not only external turbulence but also the emotional and systemic conditions inside organizations that kill transformation efforts.
Who is this for?
CIRCA is designed for C-suite leaders, transformation leads, and organizational coaches and consultants who need a fast, shared language to pinpoint what’s really going on—before selecting a change intervention or framework.
Why CIRCA?
Many leadership models describe turbulence. For example:
- VUCA names Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
- BANI names Brittleness, Anxiety, Nonlinearity, Incomprehensibility
But neither tells you what to do about it.
CIRCA diagnoses which condition you’re facing so you apply the right intervention.
The same symptom — for example, delivery slowing despite everyone working harder — can indicate five different root causes, as follows:
| Condition | What’s Actually Happening | Wrong Response |
| COMPLEX | System behaviour from interactions nobody fully understands | Adding more process |
| INSECURE | Trust deficit preventing candid information flow | Demanding transparency |
| RAPID | Pace overwhelming decision and delivery capacity | Pushing harder |
| CONTRADICTORY | Competing priorities creating impossible binds | Seeking consensus |
| ANXIOUS | Uncertainty paralysing present action | Adding review gates |
Each requires a different lever. Apply the wrong one and you make things worse.
The Five Conditions
Complex
Interconnected systems create nonlinear outcomes. Experts analyzing the same incident produce different root causes, each logical but incomplete. Cause and effect blur; prediction fails
What to observe: Technical disagreements persist despite competent people. Solutions create new problems. Historical patterns stop predicting.
Typical quote: “Every time we fix something, two other things break.”
Insecure
A trust deficit blocks candid information flow. People know what’s wrong but won’t say it. Problems stay hidden until crisis. The best people go quiet or leave.
What to observe: Sanitised status reports. Surprises in steering committees. Concerns raised privately but not in meetings. After-hours Slack activity ↑.
Typical quote: “I could have told you that would fail, but nobody asked.”
Rapid
Velocity overwhelms capacity. Work in progress (WIP) multiplies. Context-switching kills throughput. Effort increases while output declines, leading to the throughput paradox.
What to observe: WIP 2–3× finish rate, cycle times rise, late nights become normal. Everything “nearly done.”
Typical quote: “We’re sprinting, but falling behind.”
Contradictory
Competing priorities create impossible binds. Legitimate stakeholders have incompatible mandates. Teams oscillate between conflicting demands. No decision sticks.
What to observe: Priorities shift mid-sprint. “Alignment” meetings multiply without resolution. Teams hedge rather than commit. Escalations loop.
Typical quote: “It depends who you ask — and who asked last.”
Anxious
Uncertainty paralyses action despite available information. Fear of failure dominates. Only guaranteed-safe choices get made. Innovation stalls under review pressure.
What to observe: Decision timelines lengthening. Risk committees blocking everything. Excessive documentation before action. Best people leaving for autonomy.
Typical quote: “We can’t afford to get this wrong.”
CIRCA in Practice: Leadership Diagnostic Prompts
CIRCA offers a powerful lens for diagnosing the environment, the true strength lies in sparking leadership dialogue that surfaces what’s really happening:
- Complex → What might we be missing in the wider system?
Encourages systems thinking by surfacing overlooked interdependencies and unintended consequences. When cause and effect blur, the question shifts from “what’s the answer?” to “what aren’t we seeing?” - Insecure → What’s not being said that everyone knows?
Surfaces the trust deficit blocking candid information flow. Problems stay hidden when speaking up feels unsafe. This prompt creates explicit permission to name what’s been avoided. - Rapid → What would we stop doing if we had to cut 30%?
Forces prioritisation when pace overwhelms capacity. The throughput paradox — working harder produces less — breaks only when WIP drops. This prompt reveals what’s actually essential versus habitual. - Contradictory → Which priority actually wins when they conflict?
Exposes the impossible binds teams navigate daily. Competing mandates create oscillation until someone makes trade-offs explicit. This prompt forces clarity where consensus-seeking has failed. - Anxious → What’s the smallest test we could run this week?
Breaks decision paralysis through action. When fear of failure dominates, scope shrinks until movement feels safe. Small reversible experiments rebuild confidence through evidence, not reassurance.
Use these prompts in leadership meetings, retrospectives, or strategic sessions to surface often-hidden dynamics and what’s often left unsaid. They replace generic “how are things going?” check-ins that produce sanitized answers.
From Diagnosis to Response: Enter CLEAR
CIRCA identifies the condition. CLEAR provides the matched response.
| Condition | Lever | What It Does |
| COMPLEX | LEARNING | Build collective intelligence through systematic exploration. 80/20 capacity split. Safe-to-fail experiments. |
| INSECURE | EMPATHY | Restore psychological safety through leadership vulnerability. Model the behaviour you need. |
| RAPID | RESILIENCE | Enforce WIP discipline. Protect capacity. Finish before starting. |
| CONTRADICTORY | CLARITY | Force-rank priorities. Establish explicit decision rights. Make trade-offs visible. |
| ANXIOUS | AGILITY | Time-box decisions. Run small reversible experiments. Make risk boundaries explicit. |
Single-lever discipline matters. Apply one lever at a time. Multi-lever interventions create attribution confusion — when things improve (or don’t), you can’t learn why.
For example, applying Agility to an Insecure condition amplifies fear instead of restoring safety.
👉 Explore CIRCA-CLEAR in depth →
What Makes CIRCA Different
Diagnostic precision, not description. VUCA and BANI name the weather. CIRCA diagnoses why your transformation stalls—and matches intervention to condition.
Leading indicators. ThroughFlow (work finishing cleanly) and Human Pulse (team sustainability) predict problems 2-4 weeks before traditional metrics trigger alerts, enabling early intervention. E.g. Early intervention costs 3 weeks. Late intervention costs 3 months.
Evidence-based and field-tested. Patterns documented across 200+ implementations spanning banking, government, retail, technology, and professional services over three decades.
Augmentation, not replacement. CIRCA-CLEAR doesn’t replace your OKRs, SAFe, ADKAR or Team Topologies. It adds diagnostic precision that makes your existing frameworks work when execution stalls.
The Book: Thriving in Turbulence
The complete CIRCA-CLEAR framework — diagnostic protocols, intervention playbooks, implementation roadmaps — is now available in:
Thriving in Turbulence: Diagnose Conditions. Apply the Right Lever. Build Capability.
Published November 2025 | Leanpub | Amazon
What you get:
- 5-minute entry diagnostic (no prior framework knowledge required)
- Pattern recognition tables for accurate diagnosis in 2-3 days
- Intervention playbooks with 2-4 week testing cycles
- 18-month roadmap for building distributed capability
- Framework integration guidance (OKRs, SAFe, Team Topologies, Lean Change, ADKAR)
Foreword by Giles Lindsay, author of Clearly Agile and The Adaptive Leader.
👉 Get the book → Leanpub | Amazon
What’s Next?
If you’re already using OKRs, SAFe, or Team Topologies, start by asking: Where are we misdiagnosing the condition? CIRCA-CLEAR offers a fast, precise lens to find out.
Stay tuned for the evolution of CIRCA-CLEAR through ongoing research and thought leadership on the blog:
From VUCA to CIRCA: A Leadership Lens Grounded in Lived Complexity
Unlocking Leadership Resilience: Sharing CIRCA Under a Creative Commons License
CIRCA model © 2024-2025 by Neil A Walker is licensed under Creative Commons BY-ND 4.0
CIRCA-CLEAR ™ 2025 by Neil A Walker
CIRCA Fluency ™ 2025 by Neil A Walker