The BANI world and its impact in the growth of organizations

We have created a series of texts addressing the BANI world - Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible - and its impact on people's lives. We discuss how self-knowledge has become a necessary compass to navigate our anxiety, uncertainties, and the incomprehensible aspects of global transformations. We describe how all of this affects and undermines our mental health, and emphasize the importance of developing ethics and new strategies to cope with this new world.If BANI is the context, it affects not only our lives but also organizations as well.

What is the impact of the BANI world on organizations?

Although much has been discussed and published about the impact of the BANI world on organizations, the topic has basically been approached from the perspective of accelerating change. There is no doubt that everyone feels this in their day-to-day work and in the development and adoption of new technologies.

In addition to the well-known acceleration, it is the incomprehensibility and non-linearity that have the greatest impact on the relationship with customers, hindering the growth of organizations.

Companies face the increasing need to understand their customers, who are true mutants. They are online all the time, armed with information, participating in communities where they share perceptions and generating new demands constantly. Along with being part of communities, these changing customers have common characteristics: they are impatient, have high expectations, and expect quick service. They have a strong desire to consume and be in control of what, how, and when they consume.

Therefore, non-linearity and incomprehensibility pose greater challenges for organizations to keep up with and make sense of the initial signs of their customers' changes. Without being able to comprehend what is happening and without generating meaning and understanding, organizations lack the agility to develop new strategies and keep pace with these changes. Consequently, these dissatisfied customers easily abandon the brand..

As an example, according to a Zendesk survey, "98% of respondents said that receiving poor service changes their buying behavior, potentially leading the company to lose sales."

And how to deal with these complex changes?

There is no doubt that over the last 20 years, organizations have focused on the importance of putting the customer at the center. Some have even embraced values like Customer Centricity or Customer First. However, it's one thing to talk about it and another to put it into practice, especially in such a complex scenario. This is where CX - customer experience comes into play.

Marketing has introduced CX as the primary strategy for differentiation, emphasizing the significance of the customer's emotional dimension in fostering brand engagement and loyalty.

The famous phrase "knowing how to listen to the customer" has evolved to incorporate the soft skill of empathy.

However, how can we truly listen when everything seems like noise and we struggle to make sense of what we hear?

This is where CX - Customer Experience evolves and positions customer journey data as the primary input for developing new experiences that cater to and surprise evolving customers. While predicting and understanding changing customer demands may seem incomprehensible, data science and artificial intelligence provide us with greater agility and the ability to derive meaning and visualize new possibilities.

With Artificial Intelligence and models for segmentation, recommendation, forecasting, and automation, managers have the power of anticipation and action at their fingertips.

Therefore, in the face of excessive fragmented data noise, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and business intelligence come into play to bring understanding and make this world more comprehensible. However, like everything in this new world, paradoxes are increasingly prevalent.

While these new technologies drive more acceleration, they are also part of the solution. 

A people + analytics solution to drive growth in the BANI world

However, data management alone is not sufficient. The challenge for companies to navigate the BANI world and understand their customers will depend on both the ability to deploy these new technologies to generate meaning and the development of individuals to deliver new experiences.

Now, we must develop people to understand how to use and interpret data, to create unique experiences, and also to question when, how, and if we should utilize new technologies and automation. It is not merely about implementing new technologies based on trends and fads, but rather how technology can be an ally in integrating principles and values into the organization's daily operations.

This is what we refer to as the evolution of management in organizations towards people management + growth analytics. These data-driven organizations, guided by values, create growth opportunities where the customer is at the core of all strategies.