+44 (0) 7973 953586 paul@impro.org.uk

Suppose you are asked to describe your current experience of the world.

Which of these words would feature on your list?

  • Brittle
  • Anxious
  • Nonlinear
  • Incomprehensible

Futurist Jamais Cascio of California updated the catchy VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) acronym to BANI all the better to reflect the changing feel of modern (2018) life.

I’m not sure quite what he was experiencing at the time, but it sounds pretty depressing. If that’s the list, let’s give up now, you might think.

But if we are willing to credit this as one way of reflecting whatever may be going on, what then are we prompted to do?

We can begin by constructing antidotes to BANI.

Renate Mikucevska, one of my colleagues in the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN), suggests:

  • Brittle to resilient
  • Anxious to mindful
  • Nonlinear to adaptive
  • Incomprehensible to insightful

I applaud their new list, which I understand as follows:

Brittle to resilient – Building systems that don’t fail under the first signs of stress, like the computing crashes that bedevil so many everyday routines from online banking to airline schedules.

Anxious to mindful – Bring our awareness to the present moment, rather than bemoaning what just happened or catastrophising about what might come next.

Nonlinear to adaptive – Mathematics assures us that we can’t reliably predict the outcomes of complex systems. So we benefit if our navigation is adaptive, catering for non-linear changes by being flexible enough to drop the plan when the plan no longer serves us.

Incomprehensible to insightful – If we don’t know what’s going on, instead of hoping to crunch the numbers or meander our way down fruitless paths of cause-and-effect problem analysis, let’s learn how better to access our insights.

We can boost the roles of intuition and wisdom to assess what’s going on and what we might do about it.

All of these are improvisational stances. And If you’d like to learn more about the power of improvisation for yourself or your organisation, please join our popular Improv in 6 Acts course, running regularly in Oxford for 6 consecutive weeks at a time. Whether you’re a seasoned performer or a newcomer to the world of theatre, this course is the perfect way to explore the possibilities of improvisation.