In business, the VUCA world is the culmination of 50 years of movement from an industrial to an information economy.
Deloitte – Consulting Firm
We’re all during COVID VUCANs now! VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. We live in a VUCA world in COVID time. Not too sure what this means? Take a look at any news broadcast or front page of any national newspaper. It’s all about during COVID VUCA that puts all life and work @ risk. What’s causing these paradigm shifts? Many stories and narratives in this book deal with VUCA. Let’s look at each element:
- Volatility: Volatility is the tendency of what appears as normal situations can change quickly and unpredictably into unusual, unexpected, and even unimaginable situations. For example, the unexpected or even 100-year events seem to be occurring more frequently and have unexpected consequences. Who would have expected pandemics, tsunamis, wild fires, heat, floods, tornados, hurricanes, and the list goes on?
- Uncertainty: Uncertainty is the inability to understand of what’s going on around us, that breeds mistrust. For example, who would expect government shutdowns, trade wars with neighbors, digital iron curtain disputes with China, and well-known companies going bust?
- Complexity: New business models, systems, processes, apps, products, and social interactions are complex. Simple personal decisions in COVID time are risk based. Should I go to the Oregon beach? Should I get my hair cut? Should I fly for my consulting gig?
- Ambiguity: Issues that should be straight forward and solvable are now ambiguous and cloudy as seen through today’s risk lens. In the new normal, business rules, social identity, and political rules are not clear, misinterpreted, and even unresolvable. There’s a higher potential of misreads due to lack of good information and too much VUCA. Business and personal decisions that should be based on a clear cause and effect relationship seem to be irreconcilable.
Work Lesson Earned: The logic flow is pretty straight forward: VUCA => Paradigm Shifts => COVID disruption => Personal risk => Personal assurance. We’ll need more trust in almost all things we do. Reagan had an expression: “Trust, but verify”. When it comes to personal risk, we’re going to verify more.