We live in a VUCA world. VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Not too sure what this means? Take a look at any news broadcast or front page of any national newspaper. Most of the articles deal with VUCA. Let’s look at each element of VUCA:
- Volatility: The unexpected or even 100-year events seem to be occurring much more frequently and have unexpected consequences. For example, the nature and speed of the Japanese tsunami surprised companies with the nature, change, and impact on very tight lean supply chains.
- Uncertainty: Lean six sigma and many new business tools are based on controlling process variation and designing stable (in control) processes. One problem is that one event can disrupt stable processes that weren’t designed for the unexpected event. The Japanese tsunami resulted in cascading events such as the widespread devastation and nuclear plant impacts.
- Complexity: New systems, processes, and products are more complex. In some cases, computer and controls systems are so complex, that solutions to problems can’t be found. For example, the Japanese earthquake caused the tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear plant and closed manufacturing plants.
- Ambiguity: In the new business normal, business rules are unclear and business processes are unstable. We call this today’s ‘fog of business.’
Life Lesson Earned: The fog of business makes business problem solving and decision making much more difficult. There is a higher potential of misreads due to lack of good information and too much VUCA. Business decisions should be based on a clear cause and effect relationship in decision-making, but today there seems to less correlation between cause and effect. All of this results in business and work confusion.