Despite the day to day challenges faced by business leaders, rarely, very rarely do business leaders have to lead their organisations in what the military refers to as a VUCA environment.
The acronym VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous and was first coined by PROF Warren Bennis in 1987, and quickly adopted by the US Army War College. Hence, the term VUCA is most commonly associate with the chaos of war. The COVID-19 pandemic impacting the world and more narrowly impacting business has produced a VUCA environment.
Most larger organisation have well-developed business continuity and disaster recovery plans able to deal with short term ICT issues, the need to vacate their buildings and work from home or implement some other short term plan. I wonder how many organisations can truly say their plans were developed to cope with prolonged periods operating in a VUCA environment, potentially for months, years, or longer? Plans are absolutely vital, especially in emergencies, but strong, decisive leadership is what will see organistaions through an extended VUCA period.
Leaders leading in a VUCA environment need to possess and demonstrate courage, stoicism, and the ability to apply critical thinking to solve what seems like insurmountable problems. The character traits of great leaders are forged over time based on their experiences, but the ability to stop, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions and use deductive reasoning to inform decisions, is a process that can be learned and applied to great effect.
This simple process can also be applied during Business as Usual (BAU) to rationally solve any problem by applying logic, void of emotion. This does not mean that the leader should be emotionless, but rather not let their emotions override the logic and their better judgment. The ability to stop, relax, observe, gather facts, confirm assumptions, and used deductive reasoning is an easy process to learn but is even easier to forget when making decisions under pressure.
