It’s a VUCA world, you’re just living in it.
“It’s crazy out there!” tops the list as the most common sentiment I’ve been hearing from my clients for the last few years. Now I am adding “It’s crazy IN HERE!” to that list, as even our inner circles of colleagues, friends, and family are shaking up more and more.
Like WEIRD from a few weeks back, VUCA is another great acronym that helps us make more sense out of an increasingly incoherent world. Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous have grown in measure and impact, supplanting stability, certainty, simplicity, and clarity. This VUCA situation shows no sign of subsiding, and shows every sign of further escalation in the glow of increasing heat coming from the Culture Wars, increasing risk from the emerging meta-crisis, and increasing mental fatigue from our overloaded sensemaking capacities.
The VUCA world impacts every area of our decision making. Where are you going to place your next investment? How long do you expect to stay in your current job? Your current house? Your current relationship? How much control do you think you have over these things, and do you feel that you are gaining or losing your grip on it? More importantly, what can you do as an Agent to be more resilient in the face of increasing Arena challenges?
Ideally this concept of VUCA has helped you at least get a better grasp on the status of the big picture and offered you a way to see all the turmoil you face in a more coherent light. But beyond just the seeing the bigger picture more clearly, a closer look at each of the 4 characteristics reveals an embedded action step for addressing it.
Volatility often shows up most clearly in markets and price fluctuations. Prepare for future volatility by investing in resilience measures. These will be more expensive on the front end of course, but provide immediate benefits in peace of mind and potential longer term benefits by offering some protection or reduced impact from market forces.
Uncertainty can be reduced by putting effort into getting more information. But let’s click down and specify that its not just about increasing the quantity of information you are digesting. Increasing the quality of the information you are getting is much more important. Finding better information will help you see the details of your specific situation more clearly which ideally leads to better decision which yields better results. Collectively this adds up to better predictive power, automatically decreasing your sense of uncertainty and increasing your sense of control.
Complexity is perhaps the hardest thing to impact, primarily due to its inherent resistance to all attempts at simplification. One direction to explore that can offer both short and long term benefits in your simplification effort is to seek out specialist help. Consulting an outside expert who can quickly and efficiently give you a streamlined take on a complex situation is a great investment. Finding one who can present that take in ways that are tailored to your situation and provide a path forward is priceless. Another, much harder, direction is to invest in your own capacity. Specialized classes or coaching can be good places to look for doing so.
Ambiguity is can be the most paralyzing of the 4 characteristics. Not getting a clear read on things leads to hesitation, and as we saw in our OODA Loop piece, hesitation automatically puts you behind the competition. One way to find more clarity in an ambiguous environment is to float some trial balloons out there to see which way the wind might be blowing. Experiment. Run A/B trials. Look for ways to test your intuitions and analyses, and be prepared to quickly revise them. The world is always moving, and good testing will show you paths for keeping up with it. Great testing will show you the ones that get you ahead.
It’s a VUCA world, you’re just living in it. Where can you apply some effort today to be in a better place on it tomorrow?
