VUCA with a side serving of TUNA and a touch of BANI sauce

Let's unpack this. These three ideas are related and worth bearing in mind when you're thinking: what the...?

First of all our world is VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. This acronym has been around since the 1940s, so it's far from new.

An updated version is TUNA: Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel and Ambiguous. It's sort of like VUCA updated and picking up the pace.

And lastly, there's BANI: Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear, Incomprehensible. We need a bit of detail here to explain this one. 

Our world is brittle, it breaks easily rather than being strong. (Think about international trade over the past four months.) 

Anxious: we're living with a constant low-level anxiety as our world changes quickly and leaves us feeling uncertain. (Think about the policies coming out of Washington this year.) 

Non-Linear: the world isn't linear. You can argue linear thinking is a danger. (Did any serious commentator predict the fall of Assad in Syria?)

Incomprehensible: We're not short of data and smart people. But if the world is hard to comprehend, neither will be much use to you. Waiting for perfect information won't help; things will have moved on by the time you've got it. (How do we get our economy growing with high-paying jobs?)

This can all sound a bit depressing and hopeless. I don't think so. All three are ways of seeing and interpreting our world and our organisations. They give us a mindset to:

• think strategically - we only have the fog of the future 

• take decisions - our thinking of the past may not be useful for the future

• take action - we'll learn as we go.