Leadership in a VUCA World

Like many other concepts in management literature, the term VUCA also owes its origin to the United States defense forces. An acronym that stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, it was coined by the American military in response to the collapse of the bipolar world order. As long as the Cold War between the two superpowers of the world - the US and the former USSR - lasted, the Americans had an identified enemy. But with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the US Army became ‘disoriented’ in a way. Now the enemy could be anyone and could come from anywhere.

This is what the whole concept of VUCA world is about. It is about the world at large becoming very volatile, susceptible to intermittent explosive eruptions. There is a drastic escalation in the level of uncertainty prevailing in the world. There are cut and dried, simple solutions to the problems of the world, so complex have they become. And, there is complete lack of clarity on almost everything under the sun, with ambiguity being the order of the day.

So, what role are leaders expected to play in a VUCA world? Or is there any role really left for leaders to play in a VUCA world? The leaders of today and tomorrow have to operate in a state of what futurist Alvin Toffler had called ‘future shock’ in his book of the same name published way back in the year 1970. In very simple words, the concept was a pointer to a state of affairs that human society would find itself in at the turn of the century in which change would engulf human society at such a break-neck speed that it would not be able to make sense out of it. The future shock is no longer in the future, it’s already very much around us, and leadership, like any other human phenomenon, has to survive in this very ‘future-shocked’ state.

The leadership of today cannot be like the leadership of yesterday. Leaders have to compulsorily change in consonance with the changing demographics and psychographics of the followers. The number of variables in the leader-follower equation has increased dramatically and there are hardly any constants remaining. The leadership task has now become an act of managing the unmanageable, of dealing with risk and uncertainty and following the unwritten rules of the game as there are hardly any written rules left.

To quote from Toffler’s book: “Society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a ‘super-industrial society’. This change has  overwhelmed people. The accelerated rate of technological and social change has left people disconnected and suffering from shattering stress and disorientation - future-shocked. The majority of social problems are symptoms of future shock.”

In a VUCA world, leadership skills should not be seen as characteristics or attributes of the leader or the leader’s personality, but as characteristics or attributes of the leadership process per se. Leadership skills cannot be seen completely in absolute terms. They have to be analyzed necessarily in the relative frame of reference of the leader-follower relationship.

The rules of leadership that worked well in the past cannot be extrapolated to the present. The ‘directive’ breed of leaders who expect their orders to be obeyed without a word of dissent cannot function in a VUCA world. In order to survive and thrive in a leadership role, the leaders will have to compulsorily commit themselves to a tolerance for chaos, which is becoming increasingly inevitable in the work ethos of the world at large.