From VUCA to BANI to PUMO: Understanding Our Evolving World

For years, we've relied on frameworks to make sense of the complexity around us. First came VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), born from military strategy and adopted by business leaders trying to navigate post-Cold War dynamics. Then BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) emerged, articulated by Jamais Cascio, capturing the fragility and anxiety of our pandemic-era reality.

Now, Ulrich Lichtenthaler introduces us to PUMO, which stands for Polarized, Unthinkable, Metamorphic, and Overheated. A further escalation of sorts trying to caputre the next wave of disruption. This environment sounds awfully out of balance—and I don't think it will come back into balance. For sure not in my lifetime, and I even doubt it will on a human time scale. But that’s for another time.

The Evolution of Our Frameworks

As I observe these evolving frameworks I can’t help but perceive them as the mere manifestation of something much deeper: a radical transformation that is unfolding underneath it all, shifting our collective experience of reality.

VUCA acknowledged that the world had become more complex and unpredictable. It was still fundamentally optimistic, assuming that these were managable challenges that good leadership and strategic thinking could navigate through. And the best would even come out stronger at the other end, a notion that was coined as anti-fragility by Nassim Nicolas Taleb.

BANI went deeper, recognizing that this complexity had become overwhelming. The world wasn't just complex; it was brittle and could break unexpectedly. It made us anxious. Cause and effect became nonlinear and incomprehensible. This framework captured our pandemic-era reality where nothing seemed to make sense anymore.

PUMO invites us to look at the the next level and perhaps reveals where we actually are. Let’s unpack each of them. I also recommend you read the original article by Ulrich Lichtenthaler.

Polarized ⚫⚪

Our world is increasingly divided. Politically, socially, ideologically. Just yesterday, I was listening to a podcast with Brené Brown, and something she said stood out to me. Not that I was surprised, I have felt that for a long time, but the way she interjected that in the conversation just made me stop in my tracks. As the interviewer wanted to hear some leadership recommendations, she took a step back, setting context by saying:

“I don’t think people are okay, Adi. I don’t think we’re okay right now. I think collectively we are dysregulated, distrustful and disconnected.“

It captures this polarization perfectly. The middle ground is disappearing as positions become more extreme and tribal. We're fragmenting into echo chambers, making collective action increasingly difficult. We are far from equilibrium, and what I find most concerning is that this applies at every single layer. For individuals, organizations, communities, and our planet.

Unthinkable 🤯⁉️

Events that once seemed impossible now happen with regularity. The unimaginable has become routine. Pandemic. Climate extremes. Democratic backsliding. The guardrails we thought existed keep failing.

And with the rapid uncontrolled ascent of Artifical Intelligence, this all gets accelerated at breakneck speed. The unthinkable becomes real, because it’s generated by AI. The internet is flooded with such content unchecked, making it more difficult by the day to distiguish reality from fantasy. The Matrix is in the process of materializing. Only that instead of an Architect, we’ve got Tech bros who have created a bloody architect studio with a mission of world domination. My apologies, I’m digressing.

What this reminds me of, is a talk by Yuval Noah Harari back in 2022 at the Nordic Busines Forum, where he elaborated on two key skills that would become absolutely critical. One of them was how to differentiate between reliable and unreliable information. The other was about learning to learn. Fast. (I’ll keep that for another article.)

Metamorphic 🐛🦋

To me that stands for the fact that we're way past incremental change. The cycles of disruptive change are getting shorter and the magnitudes keep increasing. What does that mean? Basically, that we’ve arrived at a state of constant fundamental transformation. Peter Hinssen calls it the Never Normal. He uses the metaphor of the Phoenix. Constant reinvention in a world that is breaking down. Literally and metaphorically, we’ve got to rise from the ashes time and time again. It makes me think of poor Harry Potter’s dumbstrucken face when seeing Dumbledore’s Fawkes go up in flames.

But maybe, just maybe, it would be nicer to not have to burn to ashes to be reborn. Instead, like a caterpillar dissolving in the chrysalis, breaking down the old structures in a more integrated, rather than disintegrated way, for something new to emerge. Which also means to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is that messy, unclear middle phase where the caterpillar is gone but the butterfly hasn't yet formed.

Overheated 🌡️🔥

Everything feels pushed beyond sustainable limits. Climate systems. Political tensions. Economic inequality. Social media discourse. Information overload. Our nervous systems. The pressure is building across multiple dimensions simultaneously. And just like with polarization, this pressure cooker is felt at all levels. On the planetary scale lamentably in a very literal way. Ahead of this year’s COP30, the Stockholm Resilience Centre published the latest Plantery Health Check. And it doesn’t look pretty. We’ve breached the seventh of nine planetary boundaries this year. I care deeply for the oceans, so seeing that seventh boundary crossed, which is ocean acidification, triggered a particularly deep grief in me. Just recently I heard a podcast episode of the Great Simplification with Nate Hagens, where he spoke with Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (Professor of Marine Studies at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia), who warned in a landmark paper published 25 years ago, that the world’s coral reefs could vanish by 2050.

Listening to this in that context was heart-breaking. But it is our reality, and something I’m trying to come to terms with. I don’t mean giving up, but accepting that it has come so far and that some tipping points are beyond our control. And that we’re very unlikely to mitigate, let alone reverse them on a human time scale. (Again, I’ll come back to this in a later article.)

So, what does this all mean?

What This Means for Us

Each framework emerges when the previous one no longer adequately describes our lived experience. And while VUCA and BANI still have their validity and applicability in certain contexts, the development from one to the other and now to PUMO is to me an unmistakable sign of the underlying systemic shifts that are happening, and that are now starting to manifest in our collective consciousness. We've entered an epoch of fundamental shift, and the question is whether we will be capable to shift our paradigm along with it to adapt in appropriate ways, or whether we’ll just continue with Business As Usual tumbling towards our demise.

Don’t get me wrong. This may all sound grim. Because it is. Yet, that does not mean that I’ve given up all hope. If that was the case, I wouldn’t be writing these lines, but would be enjoying my time somewhere else rather than wasting my thoughts and energy on this. But because our industrial 'modern' society is so bad at grasping systems, still unable to truly embrace the bigger picture, remaining stuck in self-interests, and clinging onto vested interests, not taking into account the greater good (see the current COP30), I’m not very optimistic about where we’re heading.

Yet, we still have to make sense of it all to not freeze or fawn and remain stuck in paralysis. Flight isn’t an option, unless you’ve got billions to pour into projects to leave this planet. But I’ve got a spoiler alert for the few working on this: Mars sucks.

That leaves us with fight. But to fight effectively, how do we go about this sense-making then?

To me it’s actually less a question of how, and more one of when and where.

The Coaching Question

In our ever-accelerating world full of distractions, with a continuous warfare to grab and keep our attention elsewhere, it becomes more and more difficult to sit down, take a deep breath, and think things through.

But that is how sense-making begins. And that is where my work begins.

I believe that in this type of world, the art of coaching is becoming more relevant and more urgent by the day.

(Yes, you can also chat with AI and be coached by it, but I still believe in genuine human connection.)

In a world that is Polarized, Unthinkable, Metamorphic, and Overheated, the fundamental question becomes even more critical: Where is your journey taking you, and are you actively choosing that direction?

Because while you can't control the transformation that's happening around us, you can develop the inner capacities to navigate this reality without being overwhelmed by it.

My coaching creates SPACE for reflection and deep thinking about your path forward—space that acknowledges the intensity of our context without being paralyzed by it. I'm not offering simplistic solutions or pretending the complexity doesn't exist. Instead, I help you:

• Recognize patterns even when polarization makes it hard to see clearly

• Build resilience for when the unthinkable inevitably happens

• Navigate transformation without losing yourself in the metamorphosis

• Find sustainable paces in an overheated environment

Where We Go From Here

So what comes next? VUCA → BANI → PUMO → ... ? This progression of framework reveals how hard it is becoming to keep up with a reality that keeps intensifying.

Maybe the question isn't what acronym comes next, but rather: are we developing the consciousness and capabilities adequate to the moment we're actually in?

The frameworks will continue to evolve because the world continues to change. But your capacity to navigate that change—to move from reactive to responsive, from overwhelmed to aware, from anxious to grounded—that's what determines not just whether you survive, but whether you can still thrive and contribute meaningfully.

To me this requires systemic transformation. We have to move beyond change, sustainability, and leadership. To me those ideas are no longer adequate in this world. What I feel we need instead is to lead with approaches rooted in transformation, regeneration, and stewardship.

BREATHE

If this all feels like too much, I see you.

It takes time and space to digest it all. Our nervous system is constantly aroused and under pressure. There needs to be times when we can release that pressure, flush the system. Only then can we create clarity, define priorities, build systems that support rather than drain us, and make sure we follow through on the goals we set ourselves.

That’s what I’m here for. It all starts with taking a deep breath. And BREATHE is my own response to PUMO. I will unpack what this stands for soon, but not just yet. I couldn’t resist introducing yet another acronym.

So stay tuned, because in a polarized, unthinkable, metamorphic, and overheated world, the leaders and changemakers who will make a difference are those who can stay grounded, think clearly, and act with integrity.

That's the work. That's the invitation.