Surviving & Thriving in a VUCA World
We were very fortunate to have Stephen Callaghan and Stephen Dowling visit Computershare last week to present their talk on surviving and thriving in a VUCA world. You may have heard the word VUCA bandied about and wondered what it all means; well, it nicely sums up the world that we now live in, one that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Having originated in the military to describe a post-cold war era, VUCA is now very applicable to the accelerating challenges of a truly global economy and continuous business disruption that we all face. A captivated audience from across the organisation took in the powerful ‘Adapt or Die’ message and the imperative to develop their skills as ‘anti-fragile’ leaders. This is helping us on our journey of enhancing business agility and creating a responsive organisation to better face the future. You can learn more from their fascinating article: Adapt or Die... in the world of disruption
Principal Consultant at Tetradian Consulting
8 年Thanks, Peter Tseglakof. Probably the key point is the one you made in your reply above, two months back: yes, it's a nice overview, but it misses that key concern about the absence of maintenance and suchlike (Edmund O'Shaughnessy's 'Maker/Mender/Maintainer' split). The concept of VUCA and the 'Sharkfin' in the article might work just fine in a world of infinite resources and low to no latency for skills-development the unlearn/relearn/apply cycle - but in the real world that we live in, those are very real constraints...
An interesting and useful post that prompted a query that you may be able to help with. I’m wrestling with how we know the world is becoming, or has become, VUCA. Seemingly, we should be able to clearly differentiate between the VUCA world and the non-VUCA world. As there is now much discussion about VUCA there must be a means, or criteria, to clearly mark the transition to VUCA, but I’m finding it tricky to find clarity around this. If we can't be clear about this transition, then we cannot differentiate and compare ideas, skills, models, tools etc. applicable to the non-VUCA world with the VUCA world. Without clarity of the difference there is a strong possibility that we will adopting the same ideas, skills, models, tools etc. applicable for the non-VUCA world. If we don’t know how the VUCA world actually differs in practice we can’t determine the necessary differences in ideas, skills, models, tools etc. and assuring that they are adapted for the VUCA world. If for the VUCA world, we just adopt what we’ve done before then this seems to render the notion of VUCA meaningless. I’m sure the above isn’t the case, but I’d appreciate some help with clearly identifying the practical differences between the VUCA and non-VUCA worlds and how you know ideas, skills, models, tools etc. have been appropriately adapted or assured as applicable to the VUCA world. I hope that makes some sense.
Enterprise Coach & Trainer
8 年Thanks Ed, was a complete pleasure and thanks for being such a great host.