Episode #3 - Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible
Happy June, friends! Loads to celebrate, which is ironic, given the title of this month’s newsletter, but life is like that, isn’t it?
I just had my birthday, and all the birthday good wishes from friends near and far never fails to make me smile. And I got a fancy Dutch Technivorm Moccamaster coffee maker that is bringing me ridiculous amounts of joy in the morning.
Today is also officially Book Launch Day, so if you’re interested in ordering a copy of Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums, it’s now available from the good people at Routledge. And if you order before July 31st, you can get 20% off by using the discount code 25SMA2. Tell your friends!
I’m also putting together a book club style program for institutions where you can order copies and have me come talk to your staff about the ideas in the book. Hit me up at ed@theexperiencealchemists.com if you’d like more information.
So without further ado, on to this month’s newsletter.
I’ve been wrestling a lot with the concepts I talked about in Episode 2, especially cynefin. Unpacking the Cynefin Framework a bit more seemed like something I needed to do. At the same time, I was eager to work out how applying novel sense-making frameworks like cynefin can be successfully contextualized for prospective clients, since I’m now in the business of selling my services. So I started with a quick trip through some recent insightful articles on digital transformation in the cultural sector.
How digital work does (or doesn’t) get done
“Mapping digital project types in the arts and culture sector” from Chris Unitt’s Cultural Digital newsletter spoke to me because in it he tries to map out a simple but powerful typology of digital projects as a way to think about transformation and it’s dependencies. It’s well worth your time if, like me, you stand with feet in both the cultural and digital sectors.
Chris takes issue with how many digital initiatives get called “transformational” though they actually do little, if anything, to transform the organizations that execute them. Truly transformational projects in his experience are proactive, rather than reactive, significant in scale and ambition, culturally and operationally demanding, and utterly dependent on serious leadership buy-in and internal (and external) coordination.
Making sense of where the organization is, and understanding the contours of the problem it’s trying to solve through a project is something tools like the Cynefin framework excel at. I would argue it’s also a necessary prerequisite to building the kind of digital confidence to undertake truly transformational work. He drops some truth bombs along the way like, “It's important to nail the basics.” and “Don’t conflate ambition with readiness.” Ouch.
What stayed with me the most were the common factors he’s seen in really transformational projects in the cultural sector. They include:
Digitally savvy leadership at senior or board level. “Digitally savvy” is not the same as “Deeply digitally skilled”. “Savvy” implies a more pragmatic, practical appreciation of the tech, one which is within the reach of many, in the same way that people can be savvy users of computers without having degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Cross-departmental collaboration and trust. This is not a “digital” matter at all, but one of culture and workflow.
Longer-term thinking around impact and investment. This is also not a “digital” matter, but one of strategy.
A track record of delivery on smaller projects. Chris was talking about digital projects here, but I’d argue that it’s mainly an indication of a larger corporate culture, one that is able to productively iterate, and not just jump from bright shiny object to object.
I’ve witnessed how these factors make digital transformation easier or much, much harder. And they illustrate a thing I’m always telling clients about how little truly “digital” content there is in digital transformation compared to how much workflow, process, and culture transformation there is.
This view was echoed by Trish Thomas, Head of Digital Innovation at London Museum who said, ‘’Digital’ transformation is not just about technology. It is about ways of working” in “How to get your GLAM organisation to invest in digital.” As part of London Museum’s move to new quarters, she was tasked with making the case for investment in digital technologies amidst all the other priorities the museum is facing. This dynamic of needing to justify spending on some things is an interesting one to consider, along with its corollary, which is that organizations often don’t justify spending on everything. What is the ROI on sending someone to a conference, or acquiring an object?
Mind you, I’m not advocating for not doing those things. I’m just interested in how financial prudence is often used as a means of not investing in areas that need investment. Trish makes the case that “[u]nderinvesting is losing you money not saving it…” Reframing underinvestment as an expense as opposed to absence of new spending is a useful tool, made easier by applying well-known external frameworks like Forrester Research’s Digital Maturity Model to describe where on the road to digital maturity an organization is currently. Being able to make sense of the institution’s current state and give leadership an idea of what a more mature state could like allowed the London Museum to set initial goals for digital innovation, namely:
the website and collections online,
the purchase path,
the CRMS,
the DAMS and
the online shop.
None of these are particularly sexy or noteworthy as projects, but all are critical to engaging both physical and digital audiences and fixing the foundations of the digital edifice of the museum. I see a lot of synergy with what Chris identified in digitally mature museums; long-term thinking, cross-department collaboration, and a way of building a track record of success.
Enter BANI
While it is always good to find more references for my “digital isn’t all that digital” file, I was still a bit adrift, because making sense of the present moment in world history seems like an impossible task. Everyday, it seems, some support or constant that I could count on is being knocked out or actively sabotaged. Deciding whether a situation is complex or chaotic without acknowledging the larger context felt downright unhelpful. Then I happened upon this post from David Reece on “Navigating Chaos: Cynefin, BANI, and the emotional climate of now”. In it, David starts off saying, “we need more than a map and something that articulates the mood of the moment.” And to do that, he offers up the BANI framework, an acronym for Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible. Jamais Cascio introduced BANI in “Facing the Age of Chaos” in 2020 as a replacement for VUCA, the framework developed by the U.S. Army in the 1980s to make sense of the late (and later post) Cold War world. It stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. It has enjoyed a long useful life as a sense-making tool, but Cascio feels that it no longer described the ay of the world. He writes,
BANI is a way to better frame, and respond to, the current state of the world. Some of the changes we see happening to our politics, our environment, our society, and our technologies are familiar — stressful in their own way, perhaps, but of a kind that we’ve seen and dealt with before. But so many of the upheavals now underway are not familiar, they’re surprising and completely disorienting. They manifest in ways that don’t just add to the stress we experience, they multiply that stress.
Let’s dig a little deeper into each of the components.
“B” for Brittle.
For changemakers, brittle systems are a real challenge. They look strong, and may even be strong up to a point, but when they hit their breaking point, they fail catastrophically. As Cascio puts it, “Brittleness is illusory strength.” For you Star Wars fans, Nemik’s manifesto in “Andor” includes the line “Authority is brittle.” And to make matters worse, brittle things and systems aren’t just non-resilient, sometimes they’ve even anti-resilient. Touch any part of it and it’ll fail, so best not to touch any of it. A brittle system in a BANI world may loudly proclaim that everything’s fine, even as it’s on the precipice of collapse. Remind anyone of the cultural sector these days?
In a world comprised of multiple interconnected brittle systems, that failure of one component can and does lead to a series of cascading failures was other brittle systems fail because some other system failed. And as people who must live through this era, just thinking about this sort of thing is likely to induce quite a bit of anxiety.
“A” for Anxiety-inducing or Anxious.
The trouble with anxiety for those of our trying to guide change or transformation efforts is that it is a paralytic. Anxiety breeds a feeling of helplessness goes hand in hand with depression and fear. Anxiety can manifest as passivity, because we can’t make the wrong choice if we never choose. Or it can manifest as despair, that horrified realization that we missed the chance to make a critical decision, and we won’t get another opportunity. Cascio says, “In an Anxious world, every choice appears to be potentially disastrous.”
Cascio specifically calls out the way the current media environment actively produces anxiety as an engagement strategy that privileges immediacy over accuracy. He coins the term “malinformation” to include misinformation, disinformation, fake news, etc.
“N” for Nonlinear.
When I first learned formative evaluation as a young exhibit developer, I quickly became addicted to the satisfying rhythm of getting a prototype out, testing it, noting visitors’ interactions, and then going back and iterating a new version. Very satisfying and very linear. Build, test, review, test, finalize. And very useful, up to a point. Watching visitors use an interactive in the contextless context of a prototyping space couldn’t fully tell me how that interactive would function in the larger context of the gallery it was going to go into.
The same applies to organizations. While there is a lot one can to to study and improve organizations functioning, the reality is that outside factors will exert an enormous influence on them. And the causality may be difficult to see and completely disproportionate to things you can see. You change big things and nothing happens, or you change something minor, and get a drastic change. As Cascio says, “In a nonlinear world, results of actions taken, or not taken, can end up being wildly out of balance. Small decisions end up with massive consequences, good or bad. Or we put forward enormous amounts of effort, pushing and pushing yet with little to see for it.”
“I” is for Incomprehensible.
A feature of the current digital era is the increasing use of complex artificial intelligence systems that cannot be explained or understood, even by the people who made them. The layers of abstraction and complexity that make large language models and machine learning systems possible defy understanding. Cascio says that “Incomprehensibility is, in effect, the end state of “information overload.” How can you hope to make decisions about tools that even their creators can’t easily explain? In the U.S., the solution seems to be, “Just let the innovators hoover up everything on the open web and it’ll work out. “ In contrast, the E.U. Is leaning towards making users of algorithmic systems have to explain how and why these systems came to their conclusions.
Incomprehensibility and our response to it has a lot of overlap with Cynefin’s chaos domain, and the response to incomprehensibility is counterintuitive at first; immediate action. Do something, and do it now, even though it’ll be imperfect. Stabilize what you can and don’t let the urge to wait for more, better information keep you from acting.
Why I think it’s useful
I felt so seen the moment I read about BANI.
It describes meetings I’ve been in, conversations that are ongoing in the field right now, and the way I often feel in the morning when I’m about to turn my computer on for the first time.
So what about BANI makes it useful in our work right now? As David Reece said,
“Maybe the real value in frameworks like Cynefin and BANI is naming where we are, yet recognising that naming is not a neutral act - it is a way of making hidden structures perceptible, a refusal to let atmospheres pass as mere weather. In that sense, naming becomes a form of care, of resistance, and of (re)orientation. A way to stay with the trouble, and not lose ourselves in it.”
I think BANI offers a very useful tool to name the unnameable in a way that doesn’t paralyze, but allows action to occur, knowing the imperfect nature of our understanding of the current situation.
How do you make sense of 2025 and manage to make progress in your own journeys? Have you found any tools that have been particularly helpful, especially when it comes to providing context to help others feel more able to action? I’d love to hear about them!
In Other News
Toolbox & Resources
In other book news, I’ve been slowly making my way through Amy Bucher’s “Engaged: Designing for Behavior Change” and really enjoying it. She adopts a similar stance to mine in terms of looking at what happens insider consumers’ brains and bodies when they’re being engaged, but casts a much wider net. Her examples come from a variety of sectors and should appeal to designers of all stripes who want to understand more about the intersections of psychology and design.
Hitting the Road
I’ll be at the Association of Midwest Museums conference in July, presenting a workshop on “Disruption by Design: Rethinking Workplace Culture” with two of my favorite co-conspirators, Hillary Spencer and Jennifer Foley. If you’re in the Quad Cities, come by and say hi! We’re also planning a Drinking About Museums in Chicago around that time, so stay tuned.
I’m also hoping to make it to the Museum Computer Network conference in Minneapolis in November. Adrienne Lalli Hills and I have submitted a proposal called “Land Back, Data Back, Everything Back: Respecting Tribal Sovereignty in Digital Project Design” discussing an online educator resource we’ve been working on at First Americans Museum, which should be a real hoot. Fingers crossed!
I have several competing ideas for what the next issue might be about, but no clarity yet. A lot depends on potential work and whether it materializes and I can talk about it. Such is the life of a consultant.