In the ever-shifting landscape of business and leadership, frameworks like VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) have long helped us make sense of turbulence.
But as disruption intensifies and new challenges emerge, fresh acronyms-BANI, RUPT, and TUNA-have entered the scene, each promising a more nuanced lens.
Yet, as these models proliferate, leaders are left asking:
Do they truly help us navigate, or just name, the storm?
A new question is being asked, how does a model like CIRCA move the conversation forward?
The Successors to VUCA: BANI, RUPT, and TUNA
BANI: Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible
Pros:
Captures Psychological Impact: BANI, coined by futurist Jamais Cascio, highlights not just external chaos but also the internal, emotional responses-brittleness and anxiety-that organizations and people experience.
Addresses Non-Linearity: It recognizes that today’s challenges don’t always follow predictable cause-effect patterns.
Fosters Resilience: By naming brittleness and anxiety, BANI encourages leaders to build robust, adaptable systems and prioritize emotional intelligence
Cons:
Can Feel Overwhelming: Emphasizing anxiety and incomprehensibility may heighten a sense of helplessness if not paired with actionable guidance.
Descriptive, Not Prescriptive: While BANI names the new realities, it offers limited practical tools for navigating them.
RUPT: Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical, Tangled
Pros:
Focuses on Speed and Paradox: RUPT, used by the Center for Creative Leadership, spotlights the rapid pace and paradoxical nature of modern change, urging leaders to embrace continuous learning and adaptability.
Encourages Proactive Adaptation: It pushes organizations toward a culture of teamwork, collaboration, and resilience in the face of tangled problems.
Cons:
Risk of Instability: The emphasis on rapid change and unpredictability can lead to instability and resistance within organizations.
Still Largely Conceptual: Like its predecessors, RUPT often describes the environment more than it prescribes solutions
TUNA: Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, Ambiguous
Pros:
Spotlights Novelty and Turbulence: TUNA, first used in Oxford executive education, brings attention to the constant emergence of new, unprecedented challenges.
Promotes Innovation: It encourages creative problem-solving and innovation as essential responses to turbulence and novelty.
Cons:
Potential for Decision Paralysis: The focus on ambiguity and novelty can make it difficult for leaders to find stable ground for decision-making.
Overlap with VUCA: Some critics argue TUNA doesn’t go far enough beyond VUCA, merely swapping terms without adding actionable depth.
How These Models Evolved from VUCA
VUCA emerged from the U.S. military in the late 20th century to describe a world of post-Cold War uncertainty.
As the pace and nature of disruption escalated-driven by digitalization, globalization, and crises like the pandemic-leaders found VUCA too blunt an instrument.
BANI, RUPT, and TUNA arose to articulate the psychological, systemic, and paradoxical dimensions of today’s chaos, each offering a more granular vocabulary for the challenges organizations face.
CIRCA: From Naming the Storm to Navigating It
While BANI, RUPT, and TUNA help leaders “name the storm,” the CIRCA model is designed to help them “sail the boat.”
Here’s how CIRCA stands apart:
Actionable and Human-Centered: CIRCA provides practical tools and language for leaders and teams to anticipate risks, build resilience and trust, make sense of paradoxes, and sustain morale and agility in turbulent environments.
Integrates Human Dynamics: It explicitly incorporates emotional and psychological realities-such as anxiety, fatigue, and fragility-that shape decision-making and performance.
Sensemaking and Adaptation: CIRCA emphasizes making sense of conflicting information, navigating ambiguity intentionally, and fostering cultures of psychological safety and learning.
Grounded in Practice: Rather than just describing the weather, CIRCA offers a framework for real-world application-anchoring decisions, fostering innovation, and enabling human flourishing even when the path ahead is unclear.
“Frameworks like VUCA, BANI, TUNA, and RUPT have done a great job naming the storm. But most frameworks describe the weather-they rarely help you actually sail the boat. That’s why I developed CIRCA.”
Conclusion
BANI, RUPT, and TUNA represent a necessary evolution from VUCA, offering richer language for today’s chaotic, emotionally charged world. Yet, their main strength-describing the storm-can also be their weakness, as they often stop short of guiding leaders through it.
CIRCA moves beyond description, equipping organizations with the mindset, tools, and human-centered strategies needed to not just survive, but thrive, in a world where disruption is the norm.
It’s time to move beyond naming challenges, and instead, master the art of navigation. CIRCA is how organizations upgrade their thinking for the world as it actually is-in motion, in tension, and full of opportunity.
I am currently developing my book, Ingenious Agility, which delves into twelve core themes of organizational agility. Each theme is explored through incisive questions that probe the cultural, operational, and strategic dimensions of agility. Central to this exploration is the evolving CIRCA Model, which offers a framework for understanding and advancing organizational adaptability.
The book is designed to equip leaders with the insights needed to architect organizations that not only withstand chaos but also foster ingenuity and sustained innovation. To bridge theory and practice, I ground these insights in real-world case studies—such as Microsoft’s DevOps transformation, which highlights the power of cultural change and cross-team collaboration, and Haier’s pioneering microenterprise model, which demonstrates how structural innovation can unleash entrepreneurial energy at scale. Through these examples, Ingenious Agility provides actionable guidance for leaders seeking to create organizations that thrive amid uncertainty and drive meaningful, lasting change.
CIRCA Model © 2024 by Neil A Walker is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0
Leave a Reply