Living and Leading with Purpose in a VUCA and BANI World: A Framework for Executive Resilience
By P. Mpho Makwana, Chairman, aXentuateMe
www.axentuateme.net
Between the conclusion of a challenging quarter and the drive home, many senior leaders now ask a quieter version of the same question: “Is any of this still holding?” The world we were trained to lead in has fundamentally changed. The environment we now operate in does not align with the mental models we were taught.
From VUCA to BANI: Why the Old Vocabulary is No Longer Sufficient
For much of my career, the useful shorthand for the operating environment was VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. This framework originated at the U.S. Army War College in the aftermath of the Cold War and served us well. It provided boards with a language for the pressures they were experiencing and a set of disciplines—scenario planning, systems thinking and agility—with which to respond.
However, VUCA still assumed a world in which cause and effect eventually reconciled. While it was not always possible to predict the storm, one could still recognise a storm when it appeared. The last five years have unsettled even this assumption. A new acronym—BANI—has begun to circulate in strategy circles and I find it uncomfortably accurate. Brittle. Anxious. Non-linear. Incomprehensible.
Brittle systems do not bend; they shatter. Anxiety is no longer episodic; it is pervasive. Non-linear means that small inputs—a submarine cable, a tweet, a single utility failure—now produce disproportionate downstream consequences. And incomprehensibility is the honest admission that some of what we are experiencing cannot yet be modelled.
If VUCA asked leaders to become better navigators, BANI asks something more challenging. It asks us to remain coherent when the map itself is dissolving.
Why Performance Frameworks Alone Will Not Be Sufficient
The instinctive response of most executive teams to BANI conditions is to reinforce successful strategies such as sharper KPIs, tighter cost discipline, faster digital adoption and more sophisticated risk registers. While these remain necessary, they are not sufficient.
I have observed in crisis rooms that when a system becomes truly brittle, the pressure does not fall on the strategy team. It falls on the leader who must hold a divided board together and the chief executive who must make a decision at 2 a.m. without full information or the luxury of a second draft. In these moments the question is not “what does our model say?” The model is silent. The question is “what do I stand for and am I willing to stand for it now?”
This is a purpose question not a performance question. Purpose is not something one improvises in a crisis. It is either already present quietly organising the leader’s life or it is not.
Life purpose is not a mission statement
Let me be precise about what I mean because the word “purpose” has been softened to near meaninglessness by a decade of corporate rebranding.
A corporate mission statement is an artefact of strategy that describes an institution’s intended market delivery during a specific cycle. It is designed to change when the market changes, which is appropriate as mission statements are meant to be revisable.
A life purpose is a distinct concept. It is a singular, deeply internalised sentence that defines a leader’s fundamental motivation. This purpose is independent of market cycles and transferable across roles, remaining relevant even when a title is no longer held. In academic literature, it is described as an integrative cognitive-ethical framework; in Jungian depth psychology, it is the result of individuation, the gradual integration of the unconscious self into a more unified and authentic character.
A life purpose is the sentence one would still recognise as true at 3 a.m. in a language one’s grandmother would understand, irrespective of title, salary or audience.
Since 2010 I have structured my life around my raisson detre: to be a transformational and trusted counsellor to world-class leaders who aspire to leave the world better than they found it. My articulation of my life purposes has provided me with focus, driven me to greater personal excellence and resilience.
Purpose as Sovereign Architecture
The most useful concept I have encountered recently in leadership literature is “sovereign architecture”. This refers to the idea that in a BANI world a leader must establish an internal locus of control robust enough to withstand external structures failing. I would extend this further. Sovereign architecture, in my experience, is not constructed from resilience techniques or wellness routines, although these are valuable. It is built from purpose.
A leader with a clearly defined purpose has a fixed point from which to draw inspiration. She can absorb ambiguity without becoming ambiguous herself. She can manage anxiety in a room without transmitting it. She can make a decision that will be unpopular for two quarters because she is not, in fact, optimising for two quarters. Her diary begins to follow a longer arithmetic.
A leader without such a point of reference, however senior or well-compensated, will under sustained BANI pressure begin to drift. This drift is not dramatic but gradual. It typically manifests first in the calendar, then in the family and ultimately in the strategy.
Born in Season: The Biographical Vintage of a Leader
Another key conviction, distinctly African, is that each individual arrives in a particular season – a country, a household, a historical moment – and that arrival is not accidental to the purpose they are here to fulfil. My generation of South African leaders came of age in the years immediately before and after 1994. The dilemmas we were formed by are not the dilemmas our children’s generation will inherit. This is not a limitation but an assignment.
The most sustainable executives I know have made peace with their biographical vintage. They neither pretend to be younger than they are nor apologise for the era that shaped them. They read their own calendars for clues. They notice the meetings they take for no fee, the mentoring they cannot help offering and the causes that return to them uninvited. These are not distractions from the purpose but, very often, the purpose itself – leaving a lasting impact on a life that had assumed itself to be still searching.
A Working Framework for Executive Sustainability
If I were to offer a practical framework – one I use both in my own life and with the leaders I counsel – it would be based on four disciplines.
First, articulate the sentence. This is not a paragraph or a set of values on a slide. It is a single sentence, in plain language, that you would recognise as true at 3 a.m. Draft it in pencil and revise it over months, not minutes.
Second, govern the diary by the sentence. Every quarter, audit the calendar against the purpose. What is on there that the sentence would not have chosen? What is missing that the sentence would insist on? The diary is the most honest strategy document a leader has.
Thirdly, hold the boardroom to the same standard. The most costly decisions a board makes are those taken without reference to purpose – organisational or personal. The most economical and often the most courageous is the refusal that protects it. A well-modelled acquisition that drifts from purpose will cost more over a decade than the deal you declined.
Fourthly, design the handover before it is required. If you are within five years of stepping down from an executive position do not wait until the day after to design the next chapter. Purpose is portable; titles are not. The leaders who struggle most in retirement are almost always those who misidentified the seat as the summit.
The quiet strategic case
None of this is sentimental. In a BANI environment a purposeful leader is a more sustainable asset than a merely competent one – for shareholders, employees and the country. Purpose reduces the volatility of the decision-maker at the very moment when the volatility of the system is rising. This is a governance dividend not a personal indulgence.
The boards I serve, the executives I counsel and the young leaders who write to me from across the continent are, I believe, converging on the same intuition. The frameworks of the last thirty years have taken us a long way but will not, on their own, take us through the next decade. What will take us through is the quiet, unfashionable work of naming our purpose – and then leading and living from there.
The position or title is not the summit. Purpose is.
Live and Lead with Purpose.
— P. Mpho Makwana
Chairman, aXentuateMe
www· axentuateme.net #aXentuateMe #LiveAndLeadWithPurpose #EffectiveBoardLeadership #ExecutiveCoaching