CIRCA model – NEIL WALKER

A Leadership Lens Grounded in Lived Complexity

CIRCA stands for Complex, Insecure, Rapid, Contradictory, Anxious.
It’s a human-centered lens for understanding and responding to the real dynamics leaders face — not just the external turbulence, but the emotional and systemic undercurrents inside organizations.

Unlike older frameworks like VUCA or BANI, CIRCA connects the storm outside with the dissonance inside. It gives language to what leaders already feel — and tools to navigate when certainty is impossible.

👉 Skip straight to: CIRCA-CLEAR →

Why CIRCA?

Because today’s challenges aren’t just fast – they’re contradictory, emotionally charged, and structurally uncertain.

Traditional models (VUCA, BANI, etc.) offer analysis. CIRCA offers awareness, language, and leadership prompts to name the mess and navigate forward – even when certainty is impossible.

Complex: Interconnected systems create nonlinear outcomes. Cause and effect blur.
Insecure: Fragile foundations — supply chains, tech stacks, economies — amplify risk.
Rapid: Decision windows shrink. Action matters more than perfect plans.
Contradictory: Leaders juggle paradoxes: speed vs. safety, control vs. empowerment.
Anxious: Anxiety drains bandwidth and trust — and it’s contagious.

CIRCA reframes leadership as navigation, not prediction. It replaces the false comfort of “exact answers” with the power of approximation — circa, not exactly.

CIRCA in Practice: Leadership Prompts

While CIRCA offers a powerful lens for diagnosing the environment, the true value of CIRCA lies in sparking better dialogue and better decisions.

Leadership prompts are designed to open up reflection, challenge assumptions, and guide adaptive action — even when the path isn’t clear.

These prompts open reflection and unlock adaptive action:

Complex → What might we be missing in the wider system?
Encourages systems thinking by surfacing overlooked interdependencies and unintended consequences.
Insecure → Where are we over-reliant on brittle assumptions?
Identifies areas where confidence may be misplaced — whether in plans, platforms, or partnerships.
Rapid → What can we learn this week that shifts our direction?
Invites continuous learning and iterative progress, rather than overcommitment to outdated plans.
Contradictory → What truth lives in the tension we’re avoiding?
Helps navigate polarities and surface multiple valid perspectives, instead of defaulting to binary decisions.
Anxious → How do we support people when the world feels overwhelming?
Centers the human element, prompting action that builds psychological safety and trust.

👉 Use them in leadership meetings, retrospectives, or strategic planning sessions to surface what’s often left unsaid.

Strategic Value of CIRCA

CIRCA isn’t just a clever acronym – it’s a leadership sensing system for the emotional and systemic realities of modern organisations.

It names what most frameworks overlook: the felt experience of complexity, contradiction, and pace. Its strategic value lies in how it helps leaders see clearly, feel deeply, and respond wisely.

In a world of shifting priorities, turbulent environments, and emotional strain, leadership models must do more than describe the problem. Based on feedback, “CIRCA offers a multidimensional lens”, it blends systems thinking with human-centered insight – to guide meaningful action, not just analysis.:

Human-Centered: Names emotional realities like anxiety and overload.
Systemic: Surfaces the hidden interdependencies driving fragility.
Actionable: Goes beyond diagnosis, offering prompts and pathways forward.

This isn’t just analysis. It’s a compass.

From Awareness to Action

CIRCA identifies the terrain. To walk it, leaders need practical responses.

That’s where CLEAR comes in — a capability-building layer that transforms CIRCA’s pressures into empowered action:

Clarity for complexity
Learning for insecurity
Empathy for rapid change
Agility for contradiction
Resilience for anxiety

👉 Discover CIRCA CLEAR →

The Real Work of Leadership

The future doesn’t demand perfect plans. It demands resilient people, purpose, and the humility to adapt when the ground shifts.

CIRCA is more than a model. It’s a mindset and a method for leading in uncertainty. It reframes complexity as opportunity, contradiction as fuel for innovation, and anxiety as a signal to lead with empathy.

“A leadership model that embraces uncertainty not as a threat — but as the very terrain of leadership.”

Next Step → Building the Capabilities to Respond

If CIRCA identifies the challenge, CLEAR is the response — a capability-building layer that transforms insight into action through Clarity, Learning, Empathy, Agility, and Resilience.

👉 Discover CIRCA CLEAR →

Or dive into the CIRCA Playbook → to explore practical tools, team prompts, and workshop formats for applying CIRCA in real-world settings. (Coming soon.)

Or delve into more thought leadership in the blog:

From VUCA to CIRCA: A Leadership Lens Grounded in Lived Complexity
Unlocking Leadership Resilience: Sharing CIRCA Under a Creative Commons License

What’s Next?

Stay tuned for the evolution of CIRCA:
👉 CIRCA CLEAR — the Empowerment Layer that transforms CIRCA’s diagnostic insights into actionable leadership responses.