DESIGN THINKER PODCAST

Ep#33: Are You Ready for the BANI World?

• Dr. Dani Chesson and Designer Peter Allan • Episode 33

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Have you heard of BANI? Are you ready for it? The term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) was coined in the 1980s to describe the context of the world. Four decades later, is this term still relevant? The term BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible) was coined in 2020 to describe the current environment. In this episode, Dr Dani and Designer Peter explore BANI. 

In this episode, you will
• learn about the concept of BANI 
• understand the relevance of Design Thinker capabilities in a BANI world 
• get practical tips on applying Design Thinker capabilities

We'd love to hear from you. Send us a text!

Dr Dani:

Welcome to the Design Thinker podcast, where we explore the theory and practice of design, hosted by me, dani, and. Peter.

Dr Dani:

Hey Pete, hi Dani.

Dr Dani:

How are you?

Designer Peter:

I'm great thanks. How are you today?

Dr Dani:

I am great, I'm excited about today's conversation Me too. So what are we talking about?

Designer Peter:

Today, Dani, we're going to talk about VUCA and BANI.

Dr Dani:

That kind of sounds like two things we've made up. It does, doesn't it Two acronyms.

Designer Peter:

Maybe we'll do another episode where we it does, doesn't it Two acronyms? Maybe we'll do another episode where we'll just talk about two made-up acronyms and see how long it takes for people to spot but no VUCA, which I'm a little bit familiar with, and BAMI, which I'm not familiar with at all. So looking forward to having a chat to you about those and learning something.

Dr Dani:

Having a chat to you about those and learning something. So VUCA and BANI are both concepts that have been developed to help explain the larger landscape that society is existing in. So what we'll do today is we'll talk about what VUCA is, then we'll talk about what BANI is, and then we'll talk about what does design thinking capabilities have to do with all of those things? Love it.

Designer Peter:

Cool, as you were talking there. I think this relates to our episode about context, doesn't it?

Dr Dani:

These two things, VUCA and BANI, are helpful frameworks or tools to help us make sense of context helpful frameworks or tools to help us make sense of context, because you know when we're living in the day-to-day, in the moment-to-moment, or we're going through our job in the day-to-day, we tend to forget the broader context of what's happening. Yeah, yeah so what is VUCA?

Designer Peter:

VUCA? Well, it's an acronym. So VUCA V for volatility, u for uncertainty, c for complexity and A for ambiguity. Those are the qualities that make a situation or condition difficult to analyse or to respond to, to even plan for or predict. The idea of the VUCA framework is to kind of pick that apart so we can understand how to do something, what to do and how to do about those qualities. So do you want me to go into what each of those volatility etc. Means?

Designer Peter:

yeah, in case our listeners aren't familiar with it yeah, well, it's a good reminder for me anyway, because it's not something I've thought about for specifically for a wee while Volatility is the quality of a situation or thing being subject to frequent, rapid and significant change. So that's the definition of volatility, and a key thing here to understand is that small triggers may result in large changes. Understand is that small triggers may result in large changes. So perhaps the infamous butterfly effect of a butterfly flapping its wings and in mexico, causing a hurricane in the north atlantic ocean is the thought experiment there.

Designer Peter:

Uncertainty that occurs when events and outcomes are unpredictable, so the cause and the effect aren't initially well understood and also previous experience might not apply to the situation. So yeah, essentially it's unclear which direction events will go, might come back to uncertainty, because that and ambiguity needs sort of picking apart. Complexity, though, so c for complexity, that's apart. Complexity, though so c for complexity that's something that involves many issues and factors, some of which may be intricate, and the complexity arises when the relationships between items and people are difficult initially to understand and a change in one place may cause unintended changes to other things down the line which, you know, our initial human kind of perspective struggles to make sense of, or see or predict. Yeah, cause and effect are obscured by many layers and it's not clear which factors are important. And then ambiguity, finally, is shaped by a lack of clarity and difficulty understanding exactly what the situation is. So information may be misread or misinterpreted.

Designer Peter:

So that's, yeah, subtly different I think, but definitely distinct from the uncertainty. So that's the definition, each of those terms we like to go into where it came from and history with our definition. So VUCA is first used, and apparently first used in the US Army War College in 1987 and first publicly published in 1991 by Herbert Barber. It could be familiar to some of our listeners because, well, it's been used relatively recently and commonly and to kind of global situations and anyone who's done any sort of agile ways of working, training, then VUCA is a term that's used there because most organizations, kind of without knowing it, are in VUCA situations. Yeah, here we go.

Dr Dani:

Nice, you had said you wanted to come back to two of the definitions. You wanted to unpack them.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, just the uncertainty and the ambiguity only because it was certainly in my mind Initially. Well, uncertainty and ambiguity I don't know what the dictionary definitions are for those, but in normal day-to-day conversation I might use those interchangeably. So to me. So sometimes those two words can mean the same thing. But in vuka to make a nice acronym and they're two different words I used. The definition here suggests that uncertainty about the unpredictability of events and outcomes, and ambiguity is about either a lack of information or clarity or difficulty understanding the information the way I separate those two in my head is ambiguity is about we're not really sure what the problem is, and uncertainty is a lot is about.

Dr Dani:

Well, we think these are some of the solutions that could work, but we're not really sure, if we do these things, what's going to happen. So I look at it as problem solution.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, okay, I like that a lot. I don't know about your brain, but when I read an acronym VUCA, then my mind immediately starts to kind of lay things out chronologically. But actually that's not the case here, isn't it? Because if that was the case, then maybe we'd be doing vacuum or something like that, which doesn't sound as good, because the ambiguity in the, in the problem, comes first, then the uncertainty and what solutions right Comes second.

Dr Dani:

All models are flawed, so the flaw in this is that it's in the wrong order. Yeah. However, in saying that though, we have both been in situations where we move into solving a problem without understanding, what the?

Designer Peter:

problem is so yeah, and sometimes you need to try and start solving it in order to understand what the problem is yeah, yeah, okay so VUCA as a term was coined in the 80s how people understand the world that we needed to prepare for.

Dr Dani:

So just a quick time check. That was, you know, relatively 40 years ago. This is 2024 now. So I started to wonder, particularly right after the pandemic is VUCA still relevant? Are we still in VUCA or is something else happening? Mostly because I just started to feel actually there's some things that feel like they're playing out that isn't fitting into that VUCA framework. I do what I always do. I did some Googling going and I came across a guy named jimai kashia who had coined a term called bonnie. Um rhymes with donnie.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, that's not why he named it that maybe that's what grabbed your attention, though hold on, this is just one letter from my name incident.

Dr Dani:

This was a term introduced in 2020. And what he talks about is actually the world that we are now rapidly moving into is one that's brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible. So I'll walk through what he does mean. Brittle is used to describe how our systems and organizations that seem very solid on the outside are actually pretty brittle, meaning that they don't cope well with surprises, with challenges, with unexpected things. They're probably like one surprise away from a critical failure point or collapsing.

Dr Dani:

We saw that during the pandemic right, we we were so used to. You go to the supermarket and everything you want is there and all of a sudden now like there's a shortage on this, there's a shortage on that, and and you started to see how quickly our supply chain just started to come apart. But you also saw things like large institutions that from the outside they've been around 100 years, but how much they were struggling. Or healthcare systems that we just kind of assume they'll always be there when what, no matter what we need, and lots of healthcare systems around the world were at a critical failing point or about to fail. I say that, but I will clarify I don't think that has anything to do with our healthcare professionals, because they work their bums off to care for people, but as a system it was very brittle, and during COVID we really started to see that. And I'm sure there's more examples than I can think of right now, but those are just two that come to mind for me. Mm-hmm.

Dr Dani:

So anxious describes a prevalent feeling where we feel like we can't make decisions, we can't act quickly and we're feeling pretty fragile. Mm-hmm decisions we can act quickly and we're feeling pretty fragile, and that's kind of tied to the brittleness right, because we're starting to realize, oh my God, everything that I thought was strong and solid is now so fragile. And what does that mean? And what if I make the wrong decision? So this spiraling effect and again, I think we saw this during COVID, but I think we're seeing that even post COVID. I can't remember the statistic, but burnout rate in employees is really high at the moment. Mental health, or the need to access mental health, has increased. But it's this sustained anxiety.

Dr Dani:

And if you think about what's been happening, we went through the pandemic where we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if we were going to get sick and die. We didn't know when we could see our families again. We come off the back of that. There's supply chain issues and trying to get back to normal, quote, unquote. And then there's inflation, there's a recession I'm exhausted just describing this but it's all this continuous anxiety and it's like when does it end? When does it go back to normal and within that large context of what's happening in the world, in our micro world, we're trying to feed the family, keep the roof over our head, go to work, come home, exercise, do all the things that we need to do to stay healthy and take care of ourselves and our families. While, while all of this is happening, right?

Dr Dani:

um and not to mention there's been a lot of political and social unrest while all of that is happening, and so every big aspect of life feels uncertain. So what do we do now?

Designer Peter:

I'm nodding along in agreement. That definitely about both brittleness and and anxiety and there's just an undercurrent of and you've said a number of times kind of ties back to vuka, doesn't it? The uncertainty. As human beings we are wired to seek um certainty. So you know, the underlying uncertainty is causing anxiety and yeah, I think it's in different, almost kind of fractal layers. You know uncertainty and the kind of micro level and uncertainty at the macro level in our lives.

Dr Dani:

Yeah, and if you look at it, it this from a brain science perspective. Our brains crave, like you said, predictability and stability and wanting to know, and we've existed about four years now in the space of not knowing and our brains aren't designed to cope with that.

Designer Peter:

We need stability, we need predictability kind of itching to get into that, but I know that we're only partway through the acronym, so what's next?

Dr Dani:

Next is so the N in Bonnie is nonlinear. This has to do with how cause and effect aren't as simple as if we do A, that will lead to B. We can't make an assumption based on past experience that hey, we know that if we do these things it'll lead to these things. And the other thing in the Bani world and what nonlinear speaks to is you could do really big things and nothing happens. Or we could do a bunch of small things and it has a huge impact and we can't really know. Okay.

Dr Dani:

This creates an interesting scenario for, or an interesting dynamic for, problem solving, particularly because, like, if you think about, in organizations we say, okay, this is the problem. We're going to invest on doing A, b, c and D. Or we're going to do A, which is, you know, a $20 million project, and we have expectations that if we do this $20 million project, we're going to get all these outcomes that are going to fix this problem. But in the Bonnie world, maybe, maybe Right, this problem, but in the bonnie world, maybe, maybe right. If you think about that and the focus that organizations have on delivery and tracking outcomes in the way that we track outcomes, we're going to be in for a world of disappointment. So we need to rethink about how do we approach our problem solving yeah, okay, so can I ask you a couple of questions?

Designer Peter:

yeah, I think things could be cyclical rather than linear. But also I'm wondering about something that is exponential. Is is, by definition, non-linear. We're in a world where what's the? The kind of thought experiment about the story of the king and the servant and the servant, that's something with the king around getting the grains of rice on the chessboard. So there's 64 squares on the chessboard and if you put a grain of rice on the first one and then the two grains of rice on the second one, four on the first one, and then the two grains of rice on the second one, you know four on the third one, et cetera, et cetera, then actually by the time you get to 64, it's almost an incomprehensible. It's like more grains of rice than certainly the king was able to provide in a year.

Designer Peter:

So there's this kind of concept of our brains really struggle with the concept of exponentiality. Is that the right word? Things kind of doubling and doubling because the day before an event everything seems normal. Then all of a sudden it's not normal because of this kind of exponential growth in something?

Dr Dani:

Well, because we are expecting something to grow in a very steady, controlled way. Again, remember, brains like control yeah so when something goes from status quo to oh my god, the world has to shut down because there's a virus spreading and we don't really know much about it, we don't cope with that yeah but if we did that really slowly, we'll probably make those changes.

Dr Dani:

But in that scenario moving slowly isn't an option yeah we need to okay, yeah, sorry, I've taken us off track a little bit, but uh, so to kind of summarize non-linear is is about a to b, but it could also be that things are happening in a cyclical way yeah. Be that things are happening in an exponential way, yeah. So it's not as easy as if. If x do y yeah because it might. Yeah, so that's.

Designer Peter:

That's what that means okay, I might have jumped the gun actually with the next uh so I is for incomprehensible, which is about struggling to understand what's going on.

Dr Dani:

There's a struggle, but we can't really grasp the situation, we can't make any sense of it. That sense-making ability is really feeling cloudy and because we can't make sense of it and remember again, our brains really like predictability, then it triggers that heightened awareness of anxiety. So the other thing that I want to point out here is that all of the things within BANI, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. These things are true and because they're true, then the anxiety goes up and as things become more and more true, the anxiety becomes harder and harder, which means that our ability to make decisions becomes slower and longer and cloudier, which means that the incomprehensibility goes up, which means the frittleness goes up. So I like to look at Bani like if it was a ball of yawn being blown in the wind and these things just keep wrapping themselves up in each other.

Speaker 2:

Okay, being blown in the wind and these things just keep wrapping up themselves up in each other.

Designer Peter:

Okay, it's a nice mental image. It presents the kind of obvious questions like how do, how do we stop that ball of yarn blowing around in the wind and start to uh, unthread it? But again, maybe I've jumped the gun and gone too early into that question I feel like this conversation is sparking all kinds of goodies in your brain. All sorts of questions. I'm not sure about goodies.

Dr Dani:

So that's Bani and, like I said, so Bani was coined in 2020 as a way of describing the world that we're living in and what we need to be preparing for going forward. So now we've talked about Luca, we've talked about Danny. Are you in this sense, or is it just me?

Designer Peter:

I'm definitely seeing that. And yeah, just going all the way back to brittle actually the word brittle takes me back to studying physics and a little bit of engineering. And you know, things are designed to withstand and the strongest structures actually flex in response to those forces. They might eventually snap when the force exceeds the kind of design limits. But brittleness to me is that it conjures up an image of something that's not flexible and there's maybe a sudden unexpected force that's applied to it and it snaps instantaneously. It's the difference between a bar of chocolate and a bar of toffee. Dani, you can snap a bar of chocolate we both like chocolate and that's quite brittle. But trying to do that with a bar of toffee it's a bit more difficult, isn't it?

Dr Dani:

Yeah, it's stretchy. Now I want some, and I think so as somebody that works in organizations, studies organizations, resources organizations, the brittleness and I think this also drives up the anxiety organizations that we have seen as, oh my god, they're a big corporate, they've been here a hundred years. Look at their building, look at their brand recognition, whatever. However, you're evaluating that their stock price what we're starting to see is that it's a bit of a facade, that, if a few things happened, those things that we viewed as being solid can easily crumble yes, yeah. And that's what that's talking about.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, right, yes, I mean, and actually I've kind of lived through that in a previous work life. A long time ago I was part of a company that was part of a massive banking corporation that seemed invincible until it wasn't and around 2008,. It definitely wasn't invincible until it wasn't and around 2008 it definitely wasn't. So yeah, just to kind of be part of that from the inside was definitely seeing that kind of brittleness the mortgage crisis.

Dr Dani:

The gfc is a great example of that. Whole life. I was told house is the best investment to make. Well, that happened. I'm like no, it's not right. So we can see how things that we've just really believed to be true starting to see the fragility of that, and it's a scary place to be yeah and this leads to what banny also talks about, like the inability to make decisions. We're anxious, our brains don't function well. In anxiety, we're not creative, we're not innovative, we can't even think straight.

Designer Peter:

To be honest, we go into like fight or flight mode yeah, yeah and yeah, without you know, at least initially, without even recognizing it. Well, this is the the design thinker podcast at annie. So should we, should we talk about vuka and bani and design thinking?

Dr Dani:

absolutely so. You won't find this shocking either. I've been doing a little bit of mapping work around the six design thinking capabilities and how do they apply in a bounty world, or do they apply in a bounty world? Yeah so we can jump into that okay.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, that's it. I'd love to actually a few thoughts popping up in my mind, but you've to tell us what you've been thinking about, how you've at them maybe we start with situation optimizing.

Dr Dani:

Describe what that is and then I'll talk about how it applies or don't.

Designer Peter:

Yes, situation optimising is our ability to step into a situation and to believe that that situation can be made better in some way.

Dr Dani:

I'll add situation optimising is choosing to believe that it can be made better, while also understanding the constraints. So it's not I'm going to ignore all the bad things and just believe it's going to get better. It's understanding all the constraints, all the bad things going. You know what? I believe this can get better.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, it's grounded in reality, not in fantasy. Exactly yeah, it's grounded in reality, not in fantasy. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.

Dr Dani:

So where situation optimizing helps within BANI is related to the brittleness, so recognizing that many of the things we've believed in or are working in, or working towards the fragility of that understanding whether it's the community, the organization, the family, whatever it is understanding where are we actually fragile? Where is the brittleness? What is causing the brittleness? Really getting your head around that and then getting yourself to a point of going, okay, I understand how we're brittle or why we're brittle. Now I want to figure out how do we make ourselves less brittle. Again, that applies whether you're you're doing this at an organizational level, at a team level, at a community level, at a family level.

Designer Peter:

Getting your heads around that okay, what kind of started to come up in my brain? There was the old stephen colby seek first to understand. So, yeah, that we're in this brittle situation, let's try and understand what's causing it, and that kind of physics analogy will try and identify the forces that are being applied, that are, you know, sudden or greater, greater than we were expecting.

Dr Dani:

The other important thing to realize here is that it's the ability to take in negative information while maintaining an optimism about what could be right, we're not in the best place right now, but I know if we do a couple of of things, we could figure out what we need to do so we can get to a better place yeah and that and balancing that yeah me.

Dr Dani:

Another way of saying that is maybe being able to respond rather than react, okay situation optimizing also has an impact on anxiety, because sometimes the anxiety is we're trying to hide and not really accept situation for what it is. Sometimes the anxiety is well, we know there's a problem, but we don't understand it or we haven't really confronted it. What I'm talking about here is this, that feeling. Let's say you've been on a shopping spree. The credit card bills arrive. You know that that's going to be more than you're expecting to want to pay. You haven't opened it because you're afraid to look at it, but you're anxious about it, but you don't want to. When we confront and understand what are the pain points, what's not working, it helps alleviate that, because then you're going okay, I've got to get my head around this, I've got to get my head around this, I've got to accept it and then I've got to figure out how to move forward another thought I was having as we're talking.

Designer Peter:

There is we'll talk about brittle, brittle anxiety, non-linear, incomprehensible, but they're as though they're separate things, but they're all interconnected and interrelated, just like a, the letters and the words. They only become a word when they're together. It's the same sort of thing. Without one of these things, then the situation isn't Banny. It's the whole, the sum of the parts, that makes the situation Banny.

Designer Peter:

Situation optimising as a capability, as something we need to train our brains to behave in a particular way, to make choices and to, in advance, know that our biology is going to try and get in our way, if that makes sense, especially when it comes to this spiral that we could go down around anxiety. So, yeah, maybe it sounds obvious, but we're jumping ahead to visual communication but getting things out of our collective heads and getting them out in the open. When it comes to situation optimizing, describing the situation we are collectively in so that we can all understand it, and bringing to the surface all the anxieties and all the constraints and the challenges, yeah, can help us move into that situation optimizing. We can logically map out what the current state is but then creatively imagine what the future state is.

Dr Dani:

Absolutely. You're starting to touch on a few of the other capabilities.

Designer Peter:

Do you?

Designer Peter:

want to explain what visual communication is. Sure, let's be nonlinear. Yeah, visual communication is. Sure, let's be non-linear. Yeah, visual communication is putting our thoughts into pictures and words, so that we can I always think of it, as you know, as as a group, as a team, however big or small, we can gather around the words and pictures, either at the same time or asynchronously, and see both our own thoughts in those words and pictures and other people's and see the sum of all that thought. It's really simply, a picture paints a thousand words, doesn't it?

Dr Dani:

so I think we'll see far more in words and pictures than words alone like you were talking about before, when we're feeling anxious or overwhelmed being able to put things down on paper and making it tangible. Because what happens is when things are in our head, they're kind of floating around and there's this intangibility to it and in our heads we make something that's this small into something, the whole molehill and mountain.

Designer Peter:

I don't know what you mean at all.

Dr Dani:

We both have the tendency to over analyze and overthink things, and which makes it even worse when we do that together, because we've gone from a project's going to be late and now the world's going to blow up.

Designer Peter:

Yeah well, it's the downside of having amazing, divergent creative brains, imaginative brains, isn't it, tony?

Dr Dani:

yes, absolutely. When we start taking those things right, like I'm a huge fan of, when we start talking about constraints, let's write them down and put them up. So write it on a post-it note, put it up on the board or just write it on the whiteboard so that we can all see what it means. Um, and even if you're doing like a mind map, like bringing a little bit of visual to it, bringing a little bit of color to it, it has some really good effects on the brain yes bright colors always spark creativity, which is why I'm a big proponent of move away from using the black pen right with a pink pen today.

Dr Dani:

It just just helps our brains. Visual communication helps the anxiety because you're starting to okay, I'm getting this out of my head. Maybe it's not as big as I thought it was. The other thing that visual communication does and this touches on another design capability is it helps bring others into the fold. This is all the things I think are wrong. What do you think to the fold? Yeah, this is all the things I think are wrong. What do you think? And then maybe your perspective makes that list bigger or smaller, but at least we're getting it all someplace that we can all see it. We can all agree with it or disagree with it, but the conversation's happening yeah, exactly love it.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, I'd uh. Yeah, I like what you brought to light there and sometimes visual communication can be with yourself and maybe it's the first step is draw a picture for yourself and yeah, I'm a big fan of mind maps. They tune into how our brains naturally work okay. So, yeah, they can help dial down anxiety. They can. I'm looking at Banny now and thinking about visual communication. Start by visualising something, you can start to make sense of something you know, make it comprehensible, and sometimes that might mean you're creating something visual that's the size of a, of a wall in a meeting room or training room.

Dr Dani:

Might take that much to map something out, to start to make sense of it okay, um, there's this statistic that says that the, the human brain, processes images that 60 000 times faster than text wow, 60 000 wow so when they say a picture is worth a thousand words, there is a little bit of science behind 60 000 okay, if you think about it, our ability to perceive things visually.

Dr Dani:

It's it's for people who are of vision, it is, it's our predominant sense I always talk about. We had the ability to visually communicate before we knew how to read. We knew how to write. We intuitively start how to write, we intuitively start drawing right. Yeah, and our brains are able to look at an image and take in so much more. You can look at a photo and you know, like, okay, who's there, where are they, what emotions are happening. All of this, if I had to explain that to you in words, so we're able to understand things at a much deeper level when we do things visually. Now, I think where a lot of people get hung up is okay. So does that mean I have to now draw a picture of the constraint? No, it could be that you list out your constraint and you start mapping. Okay, which ones are connected. There's still words. I'm, let's say, post-it notes, but you're moving them around to go. Okay, these three things are very connected. These three things are very different, but that's still a way of visually thinking about things.

Designer Peter:

Yes, yeah, yeah. And another thing we can do with visual communication more powerfully than with written communication is metaphor. So you know a visual metaphor, let's say we could represent our problem as we could draw a picture of two people standing on the other side of a chasm. There's our problem right there, we don't need to say anything else about it, and our solution might be a bridge that's built across that chasm. And again, a lot of the power in a metaphor, and especially a visual metaphor, is it makes it and safer to talk about, because a metaphor kind of takes the the sting out of the real situation and makes it, or can make it, a lot more neutral. Um, yeah, and talking about something indirectly can be a really helpful starting point into, into challenging conversations, whether they're about team relationships or global systems and everything in between yep, and the only thing I'll say to that that'll add on to that, is the two people and the chasm in between those two people.

Dr Dani:

You can draw them as stick figures.

Designer Peter:

They don't have to be yeah yeah, in my brain, in my mind's eye, danny, it was simple line diagrams, like there was a chasm, which was a simple straight lines, like a, u, an extended u, and then stick figures on either side. One of them was was calling it to the other yeah, I just wanted to clarify that because again I think I talk about visual communication.

Dr Dani:

A lot of people feel like, oh, I'm not really good at drawing. They tend to associate that with drawing and drawing like an artist yeah, yeah and that's not what this is no okay, so which capability do you want to talk about next?

Designer Peter:

well, let's get into, yeah, the old empathetic exploration do you want to describe what that is?

Designer Peter:

it's where we are seeking to understand people and their points of view and their lives, trying to understand things from their point of view. That's what we've discussed in a couple of episodes. We go exploring. For me, that means having some questions to guide us and then seeking rather than back and expecting answers to come to us, and then maybe, in the context of bani, maybe there's some sort of self-empathy or self-compassion, you know, exploring what it is about the situation that we are finding particularly challenging.

Dr Dani:

Um, more difficult. I'm gonna say that I disagree with you, and particularly banny. Okay, because I think self-empathy needs to be a consistent in every situation. Okay, if you can't empathize with yourself, if you can't become kind to yourself, care for yourself, you can't be empathetic to other people.

Designer Peter:

Okay, so we'll take that as a given, so empathetic exploration.

Dr Dani:

Assuming that we are being kind to ourselves, helps us then empathize with others. In a banny world, we have to be empathetic with ourselves and go. You know what I am anxious? I don't know what's going to happen with my living situation. I don't know what's going to happen with my job situation. I don't. Whatever it is, whatever you're dealing with, it might be even smaller than that it might be. I've got to solve this problem at work and I have no idea. I don't even know exactly what the problem is and.

Dr Dani:

I'm being empathetic. Well, that's okay, let's figure it out, you'll figure it out. You're smart, you're a collaborator and just having that empathy for yourself. And then also, where empathetic exploration comes in, if you're a leader, really leading with empathy, understanding that your people are scared, they're anxious, they're having a really hard time making sense of the world. They're probably struggling because the things that they used to do aren't being effective anymore and they might not be realizing that it's happening because the world is changing. They might be thinking, well, I'm not good at this anymore. And having the conversations about the broader context, trying to understand how are you doing, and not saying that in a oh hey, how's it going? Oh, good, and then, oh, let's go talk about the work, but really, how's it going?

Dr Dani:

And maybe recognizing, look, this is a really hard time. I know that the organization's going through a lot of shift and change. I just want to see how you're doing no house things at home, whatever it is, whatever the level of relationship you have that leader, team, member relationship, yeah, but it also works the other way, right. We also have to realize that our leaders are anxious, so we can be empathetic and go hey, this must be really hard for you. I know my job is hard, but now you've got to look after all of us and report up to so-and-so. And this is what I mean about taking in different perspectives. So it's you're able to see the situation from your perspective. You can see the situation from your the perspective of your peers and you can see the situation from your leader. The leader can see the situation from your leader. The leader can see the situation from your perspective. So it's this multiple perspective view and recognizing that everybody's going to feel a different way and all of those emotions are valid.

Designer Peter:

It's emphasizing that empathetic exploration in relation to Bani is a lot to do with anxiety, and empathetic exploration will help dial down, reduce the anxiety Kind of full stop for all the reasons you've just described, and maybe there's something about incomprehensible as well, because empathy can help resolve misunderstanding. Empathy can help resolve misunderstanding and I'm not going to say all but a significant proportion of situations at their roots is human behavior.

Dr Dani:

So if we can understand through empathy, why that behavior is occurring and bring it to the surface, then that can start to help us comprehend. I absolutely agree with that. So let's say that an organization, that in an organization, sales are dropping, one person on the team goes we really need to go spend some money on marketing, and that they're often doing that. The other person goes I really need to get out on the street and go talk to my customers, and they're doing that. And so person A is like, well, what the heck? Person B is never here, they're off, they're doing something. And so person A is like, well, what the heck? Person B is never here, they're off, they're doing something. And then person B is like, well, why is person A spending all this money when profits are down and we need to be selling more? And it's because they're off doing something they haven't agreed on what the problem is. They haven't agreed.

Dr Dani:

Well, these are the things we should be doing. They don't understand the why behind what they're doing. And this is where empathetic exploration could really help. Simple conversation, right, and something with empathetic exploration. A good rule is assume good intent.

Dr Dani:

Yeah, yeah yeah, I genuinely believe that people show up to work. People show up in their field. People genuinely want to do the right thing. People want to be helpful. I know there are exceptions to that, but generally speaking, that's what I believe about people.

Dr Dani:

So, if you start at the point where you assume that your co-workers come to work to do a good job, then, rather than judging something they do that you don't understand, this is where you go. Oh, maybe seeing this from a different point of view that I just don't see, so let me have that conversation?

Designer Peter:

yes, something to do with the, the system rather than the person.

Dr Dani:

That's the root cause but we all have different life experiences, right? So maybe this person is going around. We need to ramp up our marketing because the last company they were in they got into financial trouble. They boosted their marketing and it got better yeah, so they are solutioning based on their view of the world.

Dr Dani:

What's you know what they know? Maybe this other person went through something similar and what worked in the past for them is going out, and that's their view of the world. What this is coming to is and this touches on the nonlinear thing more and more problem solving is becoming about. We can't just do one thing because we don't know that A leads to B. Problem solving now needs to be okay. If the problem is that sales are dropping, how are we going to need to do five or six or 10 or 11 things to try to tackle that problem? And this is where empathetic exploration can really help is because if you can bring together people that have multiple perspectives of the world, people from different walks of life, different experiences of life this is where diversity becomes really important you start to be able to unlock solutions that weren't available if you're just trying to do this with one or two people's views totally agree.

Designer Peter:

I feel like you're kind of segwaying nicely into collective collaboration. Well, we're bringing together diverse groups of people, creating the conditions in which they can respect, empathize with each other so that they can make the most of their individual expertise and have a situation where the sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts, the parts being the, the people and their contribution and what I always like to say is good solutions don't come about in a vacuum.

Dr Dani:

Yeah, collective collaboration and empathetic exploration they meld nicely together. It's the idea of bringing in and maybe the thing is it's not a problem for sales to fix. Why don't we go talk to marketing? Why don't we go talk to the tech people? Why don't we go talk to the tech people? Why don't we go talk to our customers? Why don't we go talk to our people that used to be customers? Why did they leave us? It's really bringing in a wide range of people together to go.

Dr Dani:

Okay, how do we tackle this when we think about the non-linear nature of BANI, when we think about the incomprehensible nature of Bani, and when we think about anxiety? Humans, we are very social beings. We crave companionship. We want to be part of a pack. When I say bring people together, because I don't think that proximity necessarily builds good collaboration, because I've been to plenty of offices where people are mandated to come back in they all sit at their desks with their headphones on. Nobody's talking to anybody. What I mean is bringing people together. I don't care if it's on Zoom Teams, a freaking phone call, but bringing them together with a purpose and getting them to talk to each other, getting them to work together, and what I find is that when that happens, people you know, this might be a little bit easier if we were in the same room. So let's organize a time to get together in person. Yeah.

Dr Dani:

So it's not mandating that people are physically together. It's mandating that, hey, we've got this problem to solve. We need to get a bunch of people together and get some ideas going. Let's go do that. Yeah. And leaving it to people to figure out how they do that.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, nice. And again, specifically in a BANI situation, the phrase that comes to mind is a good starting point is a problem shared is a problem, have right. So, yeah, I'm also a big fan of organizations breaking through the vertical silos, but also the horizontal ones, the layers I think organizations can fall into the trap of, particularly in a bani situation. Maybe leaders try, and I think the best thing to do is to protect the people they are leading from a situation, whereas the best examples of collective collaboration I've experienced is where leaders and the people they lead actually understand and solve the problem together, rather than well-meaning leaders telling people they're leading what the problem was and what the solution is going to be and everything's going to be all great. I think that model might still work in some situations, but in both of these VUCA and BANI that then it's a mistake to exclude any particular group.

Dr Dani:

This is another good example of empathetic exploration. While leaders might be doing that from a protective nature, to a lot of teams it might feel like isolation.

Designer Peter:

Yes.

Dr Dani:

And I think it leads to anxiety. Yeah, yes, and I think it leads to anxiety. Yeah, which is why collective collaboration, when we tell people, hey, we've got to solve this problem, but look, we don't have to do it alone, we can do it together. We're going to bring people together, we're going to connect with our peers, our leaders, whatever it is. Yeah. That itself brings down the anxiety level.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah yeah.

Dr Dani:

Sometimes we use ourselves as an example here, so I don't mind. I hope you don't mind me sharing this. I think this podcast is a good example of that. I've always wanted to do a podcast, but the idea of going it alone was crippling for me and it felt a little bit isolating, like I'm sitting here and talk to myself for an and then okay, well, what if we do it together? Yeah that's a little less scary yeah, yeah, I like that.

Designer Peter:

Yes, I suppose you know the basic unit of collaboration is a dynamic duo, isn't it? So if you're feeling like our collaboration around here is so difficult, then find one other person and there you go, you're collaborating, and you oh collaboration around here is so difficult, then find one other person and there you go, you're collaborating, and you might be amazed at how many more people you managed to get to join you.

Dr Dani:

And we do that here too, right, most of the time it's two of us, and sometimes, you know, we really need to bring in a fresh voice. Yeah, and then we have a guest on.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice. But yeah, some of the anxiety, or a large part of anxiety, can come from people feeling disconnected or not belonging in an organization and, as you've said, that's a fundamental human need to feel like we belong to a group, and groups can unintentionally cause anxiety in others by not including them. So collective collaboration, OK, let's go to idea generation, idea generation yeah, idea generation is switching ourselves into imagination mode and the goal is to bring into the open and share as many ideas as we can.

Dr Dani:

In the BANI world situation, optimizing visual communication and idea generation really play nicely together. Yeah.

Dr Dani:

So we get everybody together, let's figure out what are all the things that aren't working. Then let's get to the place. Yes, we believe that something better is possible. We want to make things better, and then we can start moving into. Okay, so what does better look like? And again, you can do the situation optimizing work visually, and then you can do the imagining work visually. And I really recommend, when I do this with teams, I have them write it down before they verbalize it. I give them a time constraint, because what our brains are really good at is we're really good at talking ourselves out of it, yeah, yeah. So if I say, okay, I've got. So if the problem is that our sales are dropping, I'm going to give you 90 seconds to come up with 50 ways, 50 things that we need to think about doing, or 50 ideas to shift that. And it doesn't matter if you come up with 50 ideas or not. What matters is that I'm getting you to really think quickly and write things down quickly. Yeah.

Dr Dani:

That you're not sitting there going. Oh well, you know, blah, blah, blah. We did that 80 years ago and it didn't work, and we tend to talk ourselves out of things a lot.

Designer Peter:

And especially in a brand new situation where the anxiety is high, then the anxiety is the enemy of imagination and creativity, and anxiety can cause us to fall into the trap of only seeing one solution, one answer, and kind of getting tunnel visioned on that. So yeah, idea generation in this context is well, everything's important, but this we need to pay particular attention to our brain's traits to almost fight against creativity and imagination. So therefore, do things like you were just describing, really force ourselves to get started and it's that kind of breaking of that anxiety circuit. And that's the first step. Once you've started to see that you and other people can generate ideas, and there are lots of, there's lots more potential than your your brain was tricking into thinking initially, and that's the. That's the first step. And again, you're tying into incomprehensibility. Well, even just starting to surface some potential solution starts to clear the fog of that incomprehensibility.

Dr Dani:

For most of us, most of our anxiety happens leading up to and right before the event. Just get started, then it dissipates. I went through this when I first started doing public speaking. I noticed that I would get anxious, which was really weird because it just not part of my personality, but it was happening and what I really was actually, if I just get up there and I start talking and maybe it's not even about the topic I'm talking about, but maybe it's man, it's hot weather out there, but as soon as I get something out.

Dr Dani:

And then I learned also when I'm facilitating workshops if I get people talking within the first minute they're in the room. It's a huge difference of interactions with it throughout the workshop, because that you cut the anxiety, because you get farted and actually our very first podcast episode was about this right, we're like we're just gonna record something, because we're so anxious about it that we keep talking about it. Let's just record it, yeah yeah, love it.

Designer Peter:

So idea generation, should we go on to curious experimentation? Yeah, so curious experimentation it's where we want to do everything we've talked about so far and then start to bring things into reality. So it's taking the ideas we think will solve the problems, trying them out to see how right we are, how wrong we are in both of those dimensions, whether it's the problem or the solution. Yeah, and we're stepping into it. Whether it's not an experiment. The solution, yeah, and we're stepping into it. Whether it's not an experiment where we are needing to be right. But it's an experiment where we are genuinely interested. What's going to happen?

Dr Dani:

yeah, so we want to know if our solution is going to work or not before we invest too much time and energy into it yeah, yeah curious experimentation was made for banny yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it because here's the thing.

Dr Dani:

Yeah, in a non-linear world, with, with, that is incomprehensible. Yeah, the only way that we're going to find out if something works or not is to do it yeah, yeah right now, when I talk about curious experimentation, I get some really interesting things said back to me. Okay. So there are some situations I will not recommend curious experimentation.

Dr Dani:

Okay field and you're cutting people open. This is not the time to curiously experiment, unless they have or something. But the thing is that most of what we do we can experiment with. Let's say that the problem is sales are dropping. We can do a couple of things we can look at. Let's do a little bit more marketing. Let's do a little bit more on social media. Hey, let's get a little bit more sales. Let's do a little bit more on social media hey, let's get a little bit more salespeople out. All three of those may not work, but it's not going to ruin the company. Yeah.

Dr Dani:

Right. Yeah. But we sit around and go, okay, should we do this or should we do that? We'll try all three. Or maybe what you do is you do each one for a week and see, okay, and I think, and then and then people will say, okay, well, if you do all three and sales goes up, how do you know which one's working, which one's not? Chances are all three are having some effect yeah and does it really matter?

Dr Dani:

yeah, yeah so what it comes down to is this fear of failure yeah, definitely we've been given a problem to solve and and some of the things we try didn't work. But this is also why you need to try a bunch of different things, because then if you've been given a problem to solve and let's say you try 10 things and three work, well, you've still made the problem better. But it's breaking up with the idea that a problem can be solved to a finite point, that it doesn't exist in a banny world.

Dr Dani:

What we have to get comfortable with is we don't solve problems, we make situations better yeah, yeah, yeah and the level of better is what we should be caring about yeah maybe it's we do these three things and we go from, let's say you start out, it's 100% pain point, and we do three things and it gets it down to 70%. And then we're like okay, what are some other things we could try? And you try a few more things and you get it down to 60%. Yeah.

Dr Dani:

That's still good, and maybe in that time that's as good as it can get but. I think, what happens is we're waiting to find these perfect solutions that don't exist, so then we do nothing yeah, yeah means. Now our anxiety goes up because, well, why isn't these problems going away? Why are we still talking about the same problems over and, over and over again?

Designer Peter:

yeah, screaming out, don't get ready to get started? Uh, curious, experimentation is the only way to combat the, the fight, fight, freeze. Uh situations like do something and down and making it small and doable and reducing the risk. It pulls us out of that anxiety loop and into the progress cycle.

Dr Dani:

In a B&E world, we have to create environments where people feel safe to fail. Yeah. Because if you have something that is non-linear, if you're working in a space where things aren't easily comprehensible, and then you're telling people well, you can't fail. Yeah. You're literally freezing them. Yeah, yeah, because then what I would say is well, well, if that's the case, I'm not going to do anything, I'm just going to sit here and overanalyze everything yeah because doing nothing feels better than not failing yeah, yeah, that's very really do something.

Designer Peter:

Do something is the kind of is what we're saying with curious experimentation and do something. And but coming back to, I think you made a really great point. Um, well, you made lots of really great points, but one that jumped out at me just a moment ago was the idea that, um, we can fall into the the trap of believing that the problem needs to be solved and kind of thinking about it and framing it consciously, subconsciously, um, in kind of absolute terms, um, versus actually, let's just make something better, let's move something. Let's say it's a customer experience, let's move something from, uh, being a pain point in that experience that may actually, um, turn people away from using your services or products to actually just something that's neutral. Doesn't need to be a delight moment or something memorable, it just needs to disappear as a pain point and become nothing memorable or remarkable. That would be a success and certainly a way of moving forward. So, yeah, do you like that, that reframe?

Dr Dani:

in a banny world.

Designer Peter:

We have to reframe our belief about solutions yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and maybe it relates in a way to kind of non-linear and a linear solution or a linear mindset might be we need to move from 100 problem to 100 solved and what we're seeing is actually that's not necessarily the case it's not the case, and I liked your analogy about if we look at it from a pain scale right, because we talk about pain points.

Dr Dani:

So if the pain point is at an eight because the problem is creating an eight on the pain scale, we get that down to four, it's still better. But what we do is we get so hung up on. Well, that's not good enough. Let's keep looking, let's keep clicking, and what I'm saying is, well, do the four, get it down to a four, and then keep looking yeah, at least you've made it a little bit better.

Designer Peter:

And then yeah you keep looking yeah, keep looking, keep watching, keep yeah.

Dr Dani:

One of the reasons that organizations really struggle with curious experimentation is they really struggle to get their head around the risk around it. And I've seen organizations do this really well. They've set some really solid parameters around what you can experiment with. We have to make sure that our experiments aren't violating any laws. We need to have a couple of things.

Dr Dani:

We need to monitor the experiment because if we think it's making something worse, we need to stop it. Just because we said we want to try something for 30 days and day seven, if we're seeing, oh my God, customer complaints are through the roof, let's pull it back. So you can set some parameters, so people understand where they can experiment and where they can't. And people are clever, they can follow rules.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, Curious experimentation. So that is number six of six there, Danny. We've talked about situation optimizing visual communication, empathetic exploration, collective collaboration, idea generation and curious experimentation and how they can help us start working within bani nice it's been a good meandering conversation. I've definitely learned quite a lot this morning oh, this has been great.

Dr Dani:

it's been something that's been bubbling away at the back of my mind, so this has been really great to talk out. And when we're looking at concepts like VUCA and BANI, it's also important to remember where everything's happening in a transitional. It's not like today we're in VUCA, tomorrow we're going to be in BANI, and the idea of these concepts is so that we can keep thinking about what are the capabilities, what are the things that we need to be building up to, so that we can keep thinking about what are the capabilities. What are the things that we?

Dr Dani:

need to be building up to so that we can be okay in this environment that we're existing in moving into.

Designer Peter:

Yeah, helpful ways for us to make sense of, describe and label what we're experiencing, what we're within Nice.

Dr Dani:

Nice. So what are you taking away?

Designer Peter:

Well, bani, to begin with, I mean, it's not something I've heard before, but yeah, that's a great acronym and something I'll be using to describe or think about situations that I'm in. And then, well, there's definitely a bit of recency bias here, danny, but I think that the last thing I picked up on is this idea that helping everyone think about the problem does not always need to be absolutely solved. We just need to make the situation better. So that's what I'll be carrying forward and bringing into my work. So thank you for that. How about you? What are your takeaways?

Dr Dani:

Well, you stole one of mine. Okay about you, what's uh? What are your takeaways? Well, you stole one of mine, okay, which is that we need to do a better job, or I need to do a better job when we're looking at solving problems, framing it up that way that, yeah, we don't have to solve this problem to an absolute degree. We can think about how do we reduce the pain point. I don't think I do a good job of talking about that in the context of my work yeah, yeah, same.

Designer Peter:

Let's be kind to ourselves. We get really passionate, don't we? We think our situation optimizing it comes to the fore there and we yeah, but yeah, so that's a bit more balance I think it will be interesting to experiment with. See what I did there nice all right well.

Dr Dani:

That's why I love these capabilities, because once you learn them, you find yourself applying them yeah in everything and it works it definitely does awesome. Well, this has been a fantastic chat, peter, so thank you thank you.

Designer Peter:

Thank you very much, chat peter. So thank you. Thank you, thank you very much. Enjoyable as always, thought-provoking, and, yeah, I'm looking forward to the rest of my day now. So, thank you, danny.

Dr Dani:

Uh, thank you, listener for for listening thanks, listeners and um, I will talk to you next time speak to you later speak to you later. Bye.