VUCA
I learned a new term this morning: VUCA
VUCA is an acronym used to describe Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.
VUCA can lead an organization to collapse. As VUCA increases, fear increases. As fear increases, risk-taking decreases and innovation decreases. Paradoxically this can lead to becoming irrelevant and extinct.
VUCA can also explain how thriving organizations develop. Being aware and ready for VUCA, having the capacity and adaptability, can allow strategic approaches that provide leadership through VUCA and that adds value to others – organizations ultimately thrive based on the value they add to others to support the organization.
Futurists (people consulting to help organizations prepare for and shape the future) Bob Johansen and Jared Nichols have suggested a VUCA response with Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility.
I will also suggest to fight VUCA with VUCA: Vision, Usefulness, Caring, Action. I would lump “Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility” under an expansive concept of Vision making sure your Vision encompasses understanding and clarity, and even your visions should be agile and adaptable. (The ultimate goals and ideals may be fixed but your Vision for how to get there should continue to evolve). To make it happen then, focus on the Usefulness of your outputs, Caring for others and about your direction, and take Action (fancy words and documents only go so far on their own).
An interesting and useful post that prompted a query. 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.