From VUCA to BANI: Adapting to a Changing World

How often do you want to say “I don’t know” but feel pressured to come up with an answer? I’m facing a big “I don’t know” question, and I’m wondering how we can embrace not-knowing more as workplaces and societies. As Rebecca Rutschmann and Anouk Harde reflected on stage last week, “our AI tools rarely say ‘I don’t know,’ [because they’re trained on human records like Reddit], and humans rarely say or write ‘I don’t know’.” Provocative, right?

As we build new tools meant to improve our work, many of us fear that we’re eliminating jobs. As the workforce evolves, I’m stuck with the question: are we going to work more, less, or the same amount in the future?

I had the privilege of joining global HR and coaching professionals at the Future Workforce Global Summit hosted by NYU School of Professional Studies and the International Coaching Federation last week in Berlin. When posing this question, I heard from the ‘Marxist’ on the panel that we’ll spend more time fishing and hunting, and from the ‘capitalist’ that a few will profit while many will suffer. As the conference explored the future of work and the workforce from various global contexts, I kept wondering about the not-actively-working part of the workforce. We have many ideas about how work will evolve, but most of our human time is actually spent not working… and it seems likely we will work less in the future.

Some say that we’re evolving from VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) working environments to BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible) and that we should be prepared for ChatGPT-level disruptions every year for the next decade. After a surge of burnout and the so-called quiet resignation, many leaders are themselves becoming familiar with the experience of exhaustion in the workplace.

My take: resilience is going to be a critical skill for maintaining our human being-ness in the evolving world of human doing-ness. And, as I build my practice (very much a practice, not a perfect), I think coaching can be a highly valuable tool to support resilience. I think of coaching like training wheels to restore a growth mindset in periods of change.

How do you think of coaching? How will the future of work evolve, with and without technology? Anyone else having “I don’t know” thoughts? Let me know if you want to practice not knowing together; it’s a beautiful space to start a coaching journey.