The VUCA Reality:

It's Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous

Mar 10

Everyone, thank you for joining us for FountainBlue's March 10 Front Line Managers Online program on the topic of 'The VUCA Reality: It's Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous'. Please join me in thanking our panelists.

as a Product Leader - Sam Gupta, Pure Storage
as a Business Leader - Mike Pettinicchio, Bestow Insurance
as a Marketing Leader - Shobhana Viswanathan, Mavim

This month's panelists each had decades of experience with leadership and management, but agreed that the VUCA reality is more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous than past challenges. Yet they each remain positive, constructive and hopeful despite the challenges. Below is a summary of their remarks, advice and best practices.

See and Act on the Big Picture

Embrace the volatility, uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities in each scenario and make incremental progress in addressing them head-on.
Find and deliver on the intersection between the passion, your skills and the market need.
Focus on delivering effective, practical, must-have use cases and solutions rather than a cool solution which may be a nice-to-have.
Be willing to shift and slide and pivot, but be centered as well with your values, with your intentions, with the value you're providing for your customers.
Accept failure as a learning opportunity, but fail quickly and learn from your failures.

Be Genuine and Authentic with your People - your greatest asset.

Communicate and Connect in a way which reaches people at their level, with their preferences.
Embrace the concept of 'good-enough' rather than the dream of perfection in yourself and in others.
Believe that together you and the team can overcome obstacles and challenges and resolve issues, and make that belief inspiring and achievable.
Make everyone feel heard, empowered, engaged so that everyone can be productive, proactive, and positive.
In this global, hybrid world of work, make the time to connect with others even if you need to lean on tools like AR/VR and asynchronous meetings to make it happen.

Measure and report on the difference you're making.

Embrace all the available tools, technologies and options, but ensure that they work to serve your needs in communicating, coordinating, and connecting to deliver measured outcomes.

Put yourself first, so that you can better serve others.

Respect your 5-9 p.m. hours as much as you respect your 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. hours, to honor a work-life balance.

The bottom line is that there are no silver bullets for creating a trust-based, change-embracing workforce, but a consistent, all-in message and alignment of thoughts, words and actions will greatly increase the likelihood of success.