Rethinking Organizational Challenges in a VUCA / BANI World
The challenges organizations are facing today are distinct from yesterdays, so must the means to address them. A critical rethinking is called for to reflect on the complexities and dimensions of such challenges, to comprehend them from different perspectives, and to address them for long-term, harmonious and holistic improvements.
In today’s disrupted, unstable and chaotic world (VUCA / BANI environments), organizations must be prepared to address the diversity of these often entangled, adaptive and turbulent challenges to operate optimally and progress in sustainable ways. Similarly, societal messes require harmonized engagements and systemic interventions to achieve sustainable improvements.
Managing diverse complex situations thus calls for a variety of appropriate approaches (transdisciplinary), since conventional and reductionist ways are not only failing, but aggravating the overall situation as well.
Why Systems Thinking Is No Longer Optional
To better manage complex and wicked problems/issues (messes) in organizations/in society, one must be able to view complex situations with multiple lenses & accommodate all perspectives; see possible & actual unintended consequences, and recognize emergence; challenge assumptions, broaden the horizon and be more inclusive; promote doing the right things, before doing them right; shape the organization’s own future, instead of copying others; foster resilience, anti-fragility & foresight; seek continual improvements; proceed methodologically, address all dimensions of the issues, and have a variety of ways up the sleeves.
A methodological application of Systems Thinking/Critical Systems Thinking can promote:
- Better Management in Complex situations (VUCA, BANI, Turbulent/Accelerated Changes);
- Understanding & Embracing of Complexity, Uncertainty, Emergence, Chaos.
- Shaping a desirable Future for the organization despite Unknowns, Risks.
Systems Thinking has been designated as a core skill by the WEF in its ‘Future of Jobs’ Report 2025, as a powerful way to create strategies by the OECD, and as means for policymakers to address complex issues by the WHO.
What Systems Thinking Really Means
It is a discipline for seeing Wholes, their interrelationships and their properties as such. It is about having a holistic view, with context awareness, to understand the synthesis of interconnected components and ideas, their linkages, the networks they form or contribute to, the unintended consequences, emergence, synergies & leverages, the non-linearity of causes & effects (in space & time), and about the inherent patterns, behaviours and relationships.
Systems Thinking allows us to be more critical in our thinking, by elevating it from just seeing parts and linear interactions to seeing and understanding whole complex and interconnected systems, from seeing just events, actions and reactions to seeing the broader systems and networks of which they are part, from just piecemeal thinking and actions to coordinated, holistic, inclusive and sustainable plans for the greater good.
Critical Systems Thinking recognizes multiple perspectives to reality (Worldviews), and assumes different paradigms (Functionalist, Interpretive, Emancipatory, Structural) in different situations – Systems Thinking has transdisciplinary underpinnings.
Understanding Systems, Change, and Emergence
But first, it is important to have some understanding of systems and systemic behaviours. Briefly, a System is composed of interconnected & interrelated components (actors and/or entities and/or parts), the coherent interactions of which (synthesis) produces something (emergence) which is ‘bigger’ than the sum of the components.
A ‘System of Interest’ is bounded. It can be conceptualized when practical and/or ethical boundaries (that can be challenged) are set with intention.
Systems are either closed or open systems. Open-dynamic systems are complex (interconnected, evolving, emergent, adaptive to their environments).
Systems can have explicit or implied purposes and can behave or be provoked to behave in certain ways, depending on their entropy and/or state.
A systemic change occurs when a system’s comfort zone shifts permanently (at the edge-of-chaos, in the transition phase), with the emergence of new behaviours and attributes. Innovations usually happen at the edge-of-chaos.
Systemic Approaches for Different Contexts
Since realities can either be objective or subjective, the realm of Systems Thinking provides both ontological and epistemological grounds for intervention and learning in systems of interest.
The different systemic approaches which have developed are in response to the dissimilar aspects of complexity in different settings, namely Mechanistic, Organismic, Purposeful, Societal & Environmental.
Hard Systems Thinking (HST)…
Soft Systems Thinking (SST)…
Emancipatory Systems approaches…
Systems Dynamics (SD)…
SOSI ®: An Applied Systems Thinking Methodology
The Sustainable Operating Systems Initiative® (SOSI®) is an ‘Applied Systems Thinking Methodology’ which acknowledges all such settings as co-existing in an organization.
The organization itself is seen as an open-dynamic, socio-technical, purposeful system, and it has its unique set of characteristics (DNA) embedded in its trait-domains.
SOSI® was conceived during the pandemic to help businesses become more resilient, productive and sustainable, and has since evolved to also accommodate the more interpretive issues affecting organizations in all spheres of society.
To apply the systemic methods fittingly, SOSI® first provides a basis for awareness & preparedness, and for Systemic Leadership.
Through its S-U-M-O Principle, V-C-A-F Concept, A-P-I-M Cycle, S-E-C root-cause logic, and the Dimensions Surfacing Heuristics (DSH), SOSI® integrates the individuality and wholeness of organizations, enabling purposeful strategies, sustainable value creation, and strong Strategic Fit.
Conclusion: Shaping the Future, Not Reacting to It
Today’s World is more chaotic, unstable and complex…
The future is no more a continuation of the past.
The Sustainable Operating System Initiative®, together with its flagship tools, brings together proven systemic methods to address complex organizational and societal messes—enabling survival, sustainable growth, and meaningful progress for the greater good, despite unknowns, risks, and fears.
