“One thing is certain is that nothing is certain.” This maxim from the natural history of Pliny the old can be interpreted in a rather radical way in one direction or the other: Either the future is a dark and unfathomable cloud or uncertainty is paved with opportunities. The officer or employee will choose the way that sied him best, but one thing is certain, Pliny said true: with nearly two millennia in advance, he already lived in the “Vuca”.
A future Vuca is a delicate future. This word – or this adjective, because we often speak of a Vuca world or a work in Vuca mode – is an acronym from English, meaning “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity”. It refers to the atmosphere in which companies evolve, all over the world, at the 21st century: the term is so wide that it is used to envy by amateurs of major managerial speeches.
Small historical return: We are in 1991, the USSR collapsed, the American Mastodonte Jubile … but he seeswards to the diplomatic table of new emerging countries. The binary reading grid of the Cold War gives way to multilateralism, and it is difficult for the US Army War College to describe this new world … The latter gives birth to Vuca, a prism to analyze the strategic plans that are announced: It requires always being on its guard.
An economical concept
At the turn of the year 2000, the economy has seized the acronym: globalization and technological advances in full speed have resulted in market volatility and upset the strategy of multinationals. Uncertainty, in turn, reflects the asymmetry of information from the different actors, unable to know how others will respond, while complexity is explained by the multiplication of stakeholders. Finally, any information is ambiguous because it can be interpreted in different ways.
Management, or rather ad hoc consultants, digested the term in the wake, even if it is difficult to transpose to the human scale a concept as purely economic as “market volatility”. In a world Vuca, where everything goes to Vau-water, the boss advances in a mashed pea.
If you are viewed, the solution is a CAP, a clear vision: As always, the collective will be saved by reacting with flexibility, responsiveness and agility. The leadership response passes, for the Professor of Management at Harvard Bill George, by a “VUCA 2.0”: Vision, Understanding (Understanding), Courage and Adaptability. In a forum on the Forbes site , we find “customer” and “agile” for the last two initials.
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