The world in which we live now is full chaos, non-linear and unpredictable.
Today's world has been surrounded by:
Volatility
Uncertainty
Complexity
Ambiguity
source: iamtechnologyblog
And can be called as VUCA world.
The word “VUCA” came from US army war college to deal with a changing battle space. In war, army is given no time to prepare, to rest to eat and to respond. Nothing can be planned. Every plan and decisions are instantaneous.
Like Army and battle space, our business world is also moving towards VUCA world due to challenging and dynamic landscape.
How this VUCA concept apply to our business world?
Volatile:
Increasing rate of change. The world is changing almost everyday. New communication media, learning resources and almost every technological part is getting redefined in few days.
Uncertain:
Less clarity about future. Mostly things are unpredictible. It’s likelihood to see surprise at everystep. No One knew camera phone will kill the camera market for Kodak, even Kodak didn’t knew that. Industry giants now can be pulled down to ground in few months.
Complex:
The different demands from stake holders, the chaos and confusion that surround an organisation makes it complex. Various interconnect within an organisation makes it a real complex situation.
Ambiguity:
There might be no right answers. People work in groups and interpretation of the same things vary from person to person and makes it highly prone to confusions and bad end results.
source: mxmindia
This is our today’s brutal world, available to all.
Few decades back, good managers were required to manage tasks who carried out those to execution with a plan in place. And most of them did that gracefully. But, at that time the world was not the VUCA world as it is today. Things were pretty simpler. And today we have to face altogether a different set and scale of problems. So, solution to these are also not traditional.
How a can leader navigate a VUCA world:
We have another VUCA world to defeat the brutal VUCA world which is:
Vision
Understanding
Clarity
Agility
source: impactonnet
Vision:
A good leadership in today’s world is to ensure your team’s effort are aligned and focussed on right areas. To achieve this, whole team must be aligned with end results. Trust in yourself and team, support things by evidences and facts instead of assuming.
Understanding:
Invest more in the information. Collect, interpret and share more oftenly. Create an information analysis network which explores new ideas, collects facts and seek constructive critisism. That helps in reducing ongoing uncertainty.
Clarity:
Simplify things, approach problem from a holistic perspective. Try to get to the core and understand things.
Agility:
Adapt quickly to changed circumstances, value network over hierarchy, learn from mistakes and find new ways to get things done even better. Do experiments and apply those to broadly to problem statements.
source: chipscholz