VUCA – what they’re all talking about in managing change these days – ‘wha da’?
Well leaders in all sorts of organisations are all on about VUCA – I can hardly go to a conference now and not hear questions like:
• How is VUCA for you?
• What strategies are you using to address VUCA?
• How are your ‘people’ managing VUCA?
Last week I was giving, what the organisers who booked me termed, a ‘masterclass’ to a wide ranging leader audience from tech firms to financial institutions to educational organisations on the spine tingling topic of ‘Managing Change in a VUCA World’. I deal with all things VUCA! I think it’s a terrible term and also we don’t need another acronym do we? Still, it’s the term in currency just now. So what is it all about… It’s a way of capturing the particular environment we are in globally in terms of adapting to the challenges, pace and demands of change in whatever sector we happen to inhabit…
Volatile
Uncertain
Complex
Ambiguous
Cherry stuff! Nevertheless, the term does communicate the sense of threat, the lack of clarity, the extraordinary pace of the new, the lack of safety, the sense that there are not many ‘adults’ looking after the ‘global shop’ just now. Yet we also know that there is an enormous amount of change occurring at every level, in every sector. Our task as leaders is to read the times and respond. In the ‘masterclass’, I posited my response to VUCA as:
Vision
Understanding
Clarity
Agility
These I can work with! Terence Mauri in his recent book entitled: The Leaders Mindset – how to win in the age of disruption, shows us the research behind his key finding that purpose is the secret sauce in the response to VUCA. He shows how organisations who are clear on their purpose, have commitment all around it and communicate it well have 42% better outcomes in terms of: commitment, attendance, productivity and satisfaction. In a world where you have to deal with at least eight times more information than the person who did your job ten years ago, where 50% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented, where more data has been created in the last 24 months than has existed in all of human history – well we need a clear vision through this, we need to be able to make sense of what is happening around us to build a viable understanding with clarity to plan and the agility to respond more than react to what is occurring. Check out the Global Leadership Forecast for more details on these findings – how are they relevant to you in your sector? We’re at the leading edge of this VUCA world and equipping our people to have the resilience and agility to thrive and contribute in this world. A lot of this stuff around VUCA is old wisdom repackaged – it was Darwin who said that it is not the strongest or fittest who will survive but the most adaptable.
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VUCA – what they’re all talking about in managing change these days – ‘wha da’?
Well leaders in all sorts of organisations are all on about VUCA – I can hardly go to a conference now and not hear questions like:
• How is VUCA for you?
• What strategies are you using to address VUCA?
• How are your ‘people’ managing VUCA?
Last week I was giving, what the organisers who booked me termed, a ‘masterclass’ to a wide ranging leader audience from tech firms to financial institutions to educational organisations on the spine tingling topic of ‘Managing Change in a VUCA World’. I deal with all things VUCA! I think it’s a terrible term and also we don’t need another acronym do we? Still, it’s the term in currency just now. So what is it all about… It’s a way of capturing the particular environment we are in globally in terms of adapting to the challenges, pace and demands of change in whatever sector we happen to inhabit…
Volatile
Uncertain
Complex
Ambiguous
Cherry stuff! Nevertheless, the term does communicate the sense of threat, the lack of clarity, the extraordinary pace of the new, the lack of safety, the sense that there are not many ‘adults’ looking after the ‘global shop’ just now. Yet we also know that there is an enormous amount of change occurring at every level, in every sector. Our task as leaders is to read the times and respond. In the ‘masterclass’, I posited my response to VUCA as:
Vision
Understanding
Clarity
Agility
These I can work with! Terence Mauri in his recent book entitled: The Leaders Mindset – how to win in the age of disruption, shows us the research behind his key finding that purpose is the secret sauce in the response to VUCA. He shows how organisations who are clear on their purpose, have commitment all around it and communicate it well have 42% better outcomes in terms of: commitment, attendance, productivity and satisfaction. In a world where you have to deal with at least eight times more information than the person who did your job ten years ago, where 50% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented, where more data has been created in the last 24 months than has existed in all of human history – well we need a clear vision through this, we need to be able to make sense of what is happening around us to build a viable understanding with clarity to plan and the agility to respond more than react to what is occurring. Check out the Global Leadership Forecast for more details on these findings – how are they relevant to you in your sector? We’re at the leading edge of this VUCA world and equipping our people to have the resilience and agility to thrive and contribute in this world. A lot of this stuff around VUCA is old wisdom repackaged – it was Darwin who said that it is not the strongest or fittest who will survive but the most adaptable.