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Forbes
11-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Strategic Resilience And Agility: 4 Essentials To Thrive In A BANI World
VUCA vs BANI a new acronym to describe the world infographic template with icons have 4 steps such ... More as volatility (brittle), uncertainty (anxious), complexity (non-linear), ambiguity (incomprehnsible). Strategy has always been challenging, even during times of greater stability and predictability. Yet, plenty has been written about strategic contexts as increasingly VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) and BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible), making strategy ever more challenging. As Forbes contributor Kevin Kruse describes, 'the systems, structures, and supply chains we depend on are shockingly fragile. The world isn't just volatile; it's brittle, like an old dried bone. It appears strong but one crack and it shatters.' This fragility has been evident in the recent global trade wars initiated by President Trump. Whether it's COVID-19, Trump's trade wars, or the next unforeseen disruption, there is a renewed emphasis on the need for strategic resilience and agility with four essential foundations. Perhaps the biggest mistake in strategy is not attending to the nature of the risk embedded within it. For example, companies and sectors worldwide have been caught off guard by the trade wars, assuming more certainty about trade than is warranted. Many nations had trade agreements with the United States that were not upheld. What has become apparent is that it is not just trade agreements that are vulnerable but the rule of law itself, as noted by William Roberts, an American correspondent for the International Bar Association, in November 2024. Mechanisms intended to provide checks and balances on a system are not functioning reliably. With 'Trump's tariffs tipping the US economy perilously close to a recession,' as noted by Forbes writer Derek Saul, it is stunning to witness the inability of companies, consumers, politicians, bureaucrats, and a range of stakeholders to influence decisions. Because the trade wars have revealed that just a few individuals can amplify VUCA and BANI, strategy can no longer ignore such risks. Although the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that such amplification existed in systems more generally, it was often termed a 'black swan' event, capturing that the event was rare and hard to predict but had a significant impact. While these events may be hard to predict, they are no longer rare. The key lesson is that strategy must be resilient to shocks, and organizations need to be agile to adapt. One practical way to ensure you don't underestimate risks is to entertain the perfect storm of catastrophic events that could undermine your strategy. This isn't just a matter of listing the risks. It entails using the principles of systems thinking to understand the interconnected nature of those risks. Such an exercise is best done in groups, with the aim to challenge blind spots and entertain the possibilities, as unlikely as they may seem. In a strategy workshop I conducted one week before COVID-19 hit, the organization recognized the potential threat of a global pandemic and realized it had not addressed the risk in its strategy. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit faster than it had time to prepare for a response. Although you can and should cultivate awareness of risks and opportunities, the complexity, uncertainty, non-linearity, and the potential incomprehensible nature of contexts necessitates ongoing awareness by everyone, not just a select few, or in select moments, and it means accepting that contexts are not entirely controllable or knowable. This also means having the strategic clarity to know what, how, and when you can pivot while fostering the organizational learning and agility to pivot. To have a resilient strategy, organizations need first to understand it. For the last 25 years, my Executive MBA Strategy classes have been tasked with identifying the strategy of their business unit or organization, with a basic framing to determine the coherence of four strategy components: goals (metrics by which they measure year-over-year success), value proposition, portfolio of products/services and markets, and the core activities that support them. In most cases, executives struggle to identify the strategy components, and once they do, they often begin to see the lack of coherence in the strategy. The second part of the assignment is to assess the weakest link between the strategy and one of the following: environment (what they need to do), resources, organization (what they can do), or management preferences (what they want to do). Although the strategy components may be coherent, the organization may not have the resources or capabilities to deliver on it, or the strategy may fall short of what it needs to do given the environment, or there can be tensions between the strategy and what management wants to do. This last area of tension is often ignored, but at the organization's peril, as my colleagues and I describe in our Strategic Analysis and Action book. Strategy is ultimately a human endeavor that relies on people to construct and enact it. If they are not on board with the strategic direction or don't understand it, strategic agility will suffer. For example, when Trump launched the trade wars, organizations needed to know their pivoting options, which meant fully understanding their strategy, the strategic choices they had made and why, and the pivoting options. Events like COVID-19 or the trade wars are undeniable and grab attention. An equal challenge is the ongoing opportunity to read weaker signals of threat and opportunity that can impact strategy. The classic case of Blockbuster turning down the acquisition of Netflix, which in hindsight was devastating, but at the time seemed insignificant. As former Forbes contributor Greg Satell described, 'Netflix proved to be a disruptive innovation because Blockbuster would have to alter its business model—and damage its profitability—to compete with the startup. Despite being a small, niche service at the time, it had the potential to upend Blockbuster's well oiled machine.' Cultivating a resilient strategy that is dynamically responsive to a shifting environment is easier said than done because it is based on the individual and organizational capacity for learning, which is perhaps the least understood and developed. When I started my doctoral studies in strategy in the mid-'80s, I was perplexed that strategy didn't seem to be rocket science, but organizations seemed to do it so poorly. I soon discovered that the major shortcoming was their capacity to learn. I devoted the next twenty-five years to understanding organizational learning and strategic agility but missed the critical underpinning of individual character. It wasn't until my colleagues, and I identified the essential role of leader character (or lack thereof) in explaining the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, that I turned my attention to understanding what character is, how it can be developed and embedded in organizations as described in the two books I co-authored, Developing Leadership Character, and The Character Compass. Subsequently, along with several co-authors, we examined how leader character shapes organizational learning at the individual, group, and organization levels and the dynamic feedforward and feedback flows between the levels, as shown in Table 1. In my Forbes article 'The Crisis of Leadership Character," which I followed up with 'From Good to Great: 10 Ways to Elevate Your Character Quotient,' I describe the interconnected nature of character and how it can operate in strong, unbalanced, and weak states. Linking the three states with the levels and flows of organizational learning produces a set of behaviors that reveal why organizations struggle with agility and resilience. Although organizations want the behaviors in the left-hand column, they often get behaviors in the right-hand column. They struggle with how to move from the right to the left. Table 1 - Character Configurations and Their Impact on Learning When organizations are dissatisfied with their culture or find they lack organizational and strategic agility, the first place they should examine is character. The 10-question survey in the From Good to Great article provides a metric on how well individuals and organizations understand and are developing character. Organizations likely suffer because they haven't understood or invested in leader character development. Because there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about character and how it influences judgment and decision-making, many organizations have cultivated leaders with unbalanced character. Unbalanced character leaves the individual and the organization vulnerable and producing the behaviors in the right hand column of Table 1. Moving from the right hand column to the left requires investing in character. There are a lot of prescriptions for navigating a BANI world, but the scarcest resource will be the strength of leader character at the heart of organizational agility and strategic resilience. It is individuals who have to make sense of the world, collaborate, make the tough strategic decisions, and bring the strategy to life through their actions. In the Cracking the Code: Leader Character Development for Competitive Advantage article I co-authored with Corey Crossan and Bill Furlong, we describe steps to investing in character. One practical approach we use in our strategy classes and organizations is the practice of improvisation. Improvisation is a type of organizational learning ideally suited to co-creating strategy in real time. My strategy colleague, Dusya Vera, and I have extensively researched this field of research and practice. The practice of improvisation stress-tests character, and character is needed to effectively improvise as Corey Crossan, Cassie Ellis and I describe in Character and Improvisation: A Recursive Relationship. Another great resource is the Question of Character Podcast Episode with skilled improviser Kate Ashby describing how improvisation can support character development. Leader character needs strategic competence to harness the human potential arising from character. Organizations can have leader character and strategic competence but underestimate the influence of BANI. Cultivating an appreciation for BANI helps to stress test leader character and strategic competence. These four foundations will help build strategic resilience and agility in a BANI world.
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Time Management At Work: Efficiency Should Be Rewarded, Not Punished
Time Management at Work: Why Efficiency Should Be Rewarded, Not Punished Most time management advice assumes people waste time because they lack discipline or need a better calendar. But many employees aren't inefficient because they don't know how to manage time; they're stuck in systems designed to reward presence over progress. In some cases, expectations are set to match the pace of the slowest worker. Early in my career, I worked in sales where the standard was to make five client calls per day. Some days, I easily exceeded that number. When I asked what to do after finishing early, they literally told me to slow down. The company's priority was making sure everyone filled an eight-hour day, even if there was only one hour of actual work. The rest became about busywork meant to look like productivity. This is a widespread issue. A Microsoft study found that employees spend 57% of their time communicating in meetings, emails, or chats, and only 43% doing what they were actually hired to do. No wonder people feel overworked yet underproductive. Time Management Experts Share The Secret Behind Managing Time Time management has become focused on fitting more into the day. But it should be more focused on clearing the clutter that slows people down. That could mean fewer meetings, shorter email threads, or less duplication of effort. It might also mean rethinking approval processes or allowing people more control over how they work. David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, told me in our interview that the brain is a poor office. It wasn't built to manage priorities, remember dozens of to-dos, or track projects. That's why so many people feel overwhelmed, even with relatively short task lists. He recommends capturing everything externally, organizing it into manageable pieces, and revisiting it regularly. Kevin Kruse, author of 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management: The Productivity Habits of 7 Billionaires, shared with me how he focuses on how intentional behavior drives time efficiency. His research shows that top performers aren't faster; they're more focused. They create time blocks, work toward specific outcomes, and ignore low-value tasks. For them, engagement means more than just being happy. It means caring enough to give discretionary effort, the kind that leads to real results. Time-Saving Technology and the Role of AI in Time Management One way to improve time management is to use artificial intelligence to streamline repetitive tasks. Tools like ChatGPT and meeting summarizers can take on the time-consuming work that distracts from high-value contributions. AI can draft emails, summarize long meetings, organize research, and even generate content ideas. These tools allow people to spend more time on creativity, strategic planning, and collaboration. Used well, AI frees up energy that would otherwise be spent on low-impact work. David Allen pointed out that freeing the mind from clutter is critical for focus. AI can support that process, if people are curious enough to try it. A simple experiment like asking AI to sort priorities or write a draft can lead to huge gains in efficiency. Why Work Expectations Must Shift for Better Time Management Efficiency In many workplaces, efficiency is punished instead of rewarded. The person who finishes early and leaves on time may be perceived as less committed than the one who lingers after hours. But equating time spent with value created is a flawed model. Employees shouldn't have to pace themselves artificially to match slower colleagues. Companies need to rethink the idea that work must fill a specific number of hours. Instead, outcomes should matter more than activity. When expectations are shaped around output, rather than time served, it encourages autonomy and innovation. This doesn't mean pushing people to work harder. It means creating room for those who want to work differently. Some employees may be content to meet the baseline. Others may want to move faster, take on more, or use technology to do things better. Recognizing and rewarding that effort benefits the entire organization. Time Management Culture Needs a Redesign Time management is shaped by company culture. When people are rewarded for busyness, they'll stay busy. But if organizations emphasize effectiveness and results, employees will shift their approach. It starts with acknowledging that not everyone works at the same pace. It continues with training and tools to help employees manage their attention and time. And it works best in an environment where curiosity and experimentation are encouraged. Kevin Kruse said that culture is built on growth, recognition, and trust. Leaders who build those three elements into their systems give people room to thrive. Time efficiency is just one outcome of that mindset. Practical Ways To Shift Time Management Culture To create a workplace that values time efficiency, leaders and teams can start with small, intentional shifts. Here are a few actionable steps: By integrating these changes, companies send a clear message: time is valuable, and how it's used matters more than how long it's spent. Why Time Management Efficiency Matters More Than Ever As demands increase and resources stay tight, organizations must do more with less. That doesn't mean pushing everyone to the edge. It means reducing waste, encouraging autonomy, and empowering people to use their time well. For many professionals, they don't mind working hard, as long as it is rewarded, and they just want to stop wasting time. That begins by removing the pressure to match the lowest common denominator of worker, the slowest pace, and designing systems that support high performance, not just long hours. To obtain better time management it is important to recognize that it is a shared responsibility that includes focusing on culture, curiosity, and the courage to challenge old assumptions.
