When the Going Gets B.A.N.I., the Caring Get Going
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” my old sales manager used to say back in the ’80s.
But let’s be honest—just “getting going” isn’t enough anymore.
Despite our bravado and rallying cries—“Suck it up.” “Tough it out.” “Roll with the punches.”—We are in tough times. For decades, we described this as V.U.C.A.: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. But in 2018, futurists and business anthropologists introduced a more piercing lens: B.A.N.I.—Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible. It’s not just an environmental descriptor—it’s how our people and cultures now feel.
What does B.A.N.I. look like in a sales culture?
- Brittle: Teams and systems seem strong but crack under pressure, triggering restructures, resignations, and reactivity.
- Anxious: People can’t perform at their best when they’re overwhelmed. Mental health concerns have surged. Gallup recently reported record-low employee engagement, just 23%.
- Nonlinear: Change is unpredictable. Gallup now lists “Hope” as a critical need from leadership—a previously unmeasured category.
- Incomprehensible: Complexity becomes paralysing. Teams second-guess, lose confidence, and disengage.
The bottom line?
When B.A.N.I. sets in, company culture isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic imperative. Culture becomes the stabiliser, compass, and energy source teams need to stay resilient, hopeful, and high-performing. Leaders who ignore the warning signs risk cultivating cultures that are fragile, reactive, and misaligned.
So what can sales leaders do?
After 30 years of helping organisations create high-performing cultures, one lesson stands above the rest:
Just CARE.
Yes—knowledge of culture, frameworks, and strategy matters. But it starts with caring.
When people feel noticed, listened to, understood, valued, supported—and most of all, believed in—everything changes.
Caring isn’t soft. It’s the secret to sustainable performance.
People care about what matters. And if they don’t care, nothing else matters—not KPIs, not strategy, not your next sales initiative.
Optimising a sales culture doesn’t require grand gestures. It’s the small, consistent moments of care that move the needle:
- A leader who remembers a rep’s milestone and acknowledges it
- A colleague who supports another through a tough call
- A manager who checks in when someone seems off
- A company that offers flexibility so life and work can coexist
- A team that openly discusses real challenges—inside and outside the office—and responds with empathy and action
CARE is the antidote to B.A.N.I.
It empowers leaders to:
- Create cultures that flex, not fracture. Resilient sales teams need space for humour, empathy, creativity, and experimentation. (In anthropology, when the laughter stops, suffering begins.)
- Attend to psychological safety. Make it okay to express uncertainty or fear. Be clear about what is known and where hope lies.
- Rethink rigidity. Don’t just work harder—work wiser. Use AI to refine your systems. Invite your team to dream big—even weird. Let creativity break the tension.
- Encourage sense-making. Help your team understand the broader context, find meaning, and hold on to hope. Humour still heals**, and** perspective still matters.
And perhaps most importantly, leaders must remember to care for themselves, too.
You can’t pour from an empty cup. The capacity to give care, to lead with presence and energy, depends on maintaining your well-being. Tending to your own resilience, mindset, and recovery isn’t selfish—it’s essential.
In a B.A.N.I. world, trying harder is outdated.
Trying softer, through care, is far more powerful.
Because at the end of the day, high-performance sales teams care more about their customers, colleagues, craft, and capacity to thrive.
And that all begins with a leader who chooses to care, including for themselves.
- Michael Henderson. Corporate Anthropologist. Cultures At Work.
