Navigating Change in the Funeral Industry

Embracing Sustainability through VUCA and BANI Strategies

By Nuria Capdevila, Founder & CEO Circle Corporation, Spain
based on a conversation with Sylvie Lemaire, expert in Learning Expeditions and Innovation Tours

As we step into the year 2024, the funeral industry finds itself immersed in a scenario of accelerated technological change and economic uncertainty, while the world simultaneously grapples with two significant crises: climate change and conflicts. In this context, global instability is manifested through polarizing narratives, loss of trust, and insecurity. Economic and environmental pressures create a complex environment that demands strategic responses to build a resilient and sustainable future.

Complex challenges referred to the funeral environment will remain relevant in our future path. The shift from the established VUCA framework to the emerging BANI paradigm, coined by Jamais Cascio in "Facing the Era of Chaos," signifies a heightened state of instability. BANI, representing Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible, offers a valuable framework for interpreting unfolding complexities.

The components of the BANI acronym suggest possible responses: addressing brittleness with resilience, easing anxiety through empathy, navigating non-linearity with context and flexibility, and facing incomprehensibility with transparency and intuition. While these serve as responses rather than definitive solutions, they open the door to the possibility of formulating thoughtful and strategic actions in response to present challenges.

I find it interesting to add a snippet from Stephan Grabmeier's infographic, where we can visually observe how the BANI acronym can surpass the VUCA model and provides an appropriate framework to describe the world (previously known as VUCA world).

Given that the term VUCA has proven to be a useful framework for understanding the world in recent decades, we will use both concepts to address the challenges facing the Funeral Environment.

Sylvie Lemaire, expert in Learning Expeditions and Innovation Tours, reminds us that "in a VUCA world, decision-making becomes complicated due to frequent and perplexing changes in technology and culture. In contrast, supplementary, BANI highlights the brittleness, anxiety, non-linear complexity, and incomprehensibility of the environment, emphasizing the difficulty of fully grasping the landscape." We will explore various aspects within our funeral environment to enhance the comprehension and integration of these concepts, aiming to be more adeptly prepared.