VUCA

A couple of months ago, I read ‘Staring Down The Wolf’ by Mark Divine. Mark was a Navy SEAL, so you can imagine he leans a little on the lessons he learned when he served. He introduced me to an acronym I hadn’t come across before - VUCA.

Apparently, after the Cold War the US Army War College came up with it. Seeing as that ran from 1947 to 1991, it was surprising that nobody had come up with it before. Or did they need to? When you think about it, up until the end of that period, everyone pretty much knew where things were up to in the world; it was East V West, there was a reasonable equality of arms and with the amount of spying that was going on, everyone knew what each other was doing. So what changed?

VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Since its inception, it has appeared in the corporate world with varying degrees of presence. I think it is fair to say, it is probably about to truly have its time in the spotlight.

Volatility in the military sense has arisen now there are multiple theatres. Nobody is quite sure what is going to blow up next. Its a bit like monitoring a dozen active volcanoes with limited scientific instruments. It might be domestic terrorism, the Middle East, North Korea, or maybe even a Russian resurrection. look at where we are in the business context; six months ago we were getting ready for Brexit. Now we are battling the biggest economic downturn in centuries. There are opportunities to be exploited, but equally so, each of those may be affected by the shifting sands on which everything is trying to deal with.

This leads to Uncertainty. In the cold war, there was a pretty formulaic approach to defence. Sure, the odd distraction cropped up, such as the Falklands conflict, but because of the multiplier effect, there was enough resource to toddle off to the South Atlantic and deal with it and not leave a big gap om the Eastern front. Now, it is very much like a massive game of Whack-a-Mole. Who can be certain of which is the right bad actor to go up against? Similarly in business, there is an almost impossible task in front of the CEO and their peers, in trying to second guess what happens next. We are now in a round of significant redundancies, Bentley Motors laying off 1000 just this week. That is a quarter of their workforce! But can they be sure that in six months time we won’t have solved all this and be back to normal? That’s a lot of talent to re-hire.

Complexity is all around us. Warfare now takes us into the domains of space, and cyber. It was all a lot easier when it was a matter of who had the most tanks and nukes. Business is no different. If people have learned nothing else from COVID, the need to keep abreast of tech must be number one. Retailers with a strong online presence and ordering system have done OK. The behemoth that is Primark is sat on millions of pounds of stock as a direct result of never having gone online. But even going to the shops when we are allowed will be more complex - hand sanitisers, masks, gloves, limited browsing time. It is an awful lot of faff for going to buy a new pair of shoes.

And what about ambiguity? Have we ever lived in more uncertain times? I’m struggling to recall any! I’ve always personally described uncertainty as my ‘Kryptonite’. As someone who is quite task and action oriented I find it debilitating, and work hard to identify a way through the fog. I’ve even been known to use a coach myself!

The most important thing is that ‘do nothing’ is not an option if you intend to survive. whether internally or externally facilitated, make sure you are having those coaching conversations, from a problem oriented perspective. Involving your teams - especially when they know their livelihood may be at risk, is not only a compassionate thing to do but may well provide options that had not even been considered. When we just look at employees as commodities, we limit our horizons significantly.

If there is one positive to consider, it is that everyone is facing the same context, and that we are starting to get much better at fixing it.

Derek Flint Cert.Ed., MCIPR