BUS603: Managing People

The term VUCA was developed by the US Army War college to describe the current world, being volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Volatility stands for the speed, magnitude, and dynamics of change, while uncertainty describes the unpredictability of issues and events. Complexity stands for the chaos that surrounds all organizations, and ambiguity describes "haziness of reality and the mixed meanings of conditions". Rodriguez and Rodriguez show that contemporary organizations must face both sudden and continuous change all the time. For instance, Millennials do not remain in one workplace for more than a few years, because someone who stayed too long would be considered a failure. According to the authors, in such a world, most decisions seem to be based on emotion instead of reason. Further, the uncertainty of the future makes personal and organizational identities fluid and the "ethical radar" is used to make decisions. The complexity in our world produces confusion. Even when all routes seem to be equally valid, the result is even greater confusion and perplexity. Finally, in an ambiguous world, "every decision taken presents a series of ambiguous dilemmas" and affects both the individual's ethics and organizational core values.

According to Sarkar critical factors for success in a VUCA world are as follows:

• Sound business fundamentals;
• Innovation;
• Fast-paced response;
• Flexibility;
• Change management;
• Managing diversity at local and global level;
• Market intelligence; and
• Strong collaboration with all relevant stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, and society.
  

Horney et al. emphasize the aspect of strong collaboration in the context of organizations. As the authors argue, the leadership challenge of the current phase is to balance relationship management and task achievement. Leaders will need to deploy user-friendly technology to involve people from different parts of the world, and from different generations, in sharing knowledge and information. Agile, successful leaders of the future need to learn how to infuse collaboration into work processes, job roles and monitoring, and rewards and development systems, thus generating changes in mindsets and behavior. Difficult VUCA times demand shared effort and collaboration between generations because in an ambiguous world, where single leaders sometimes seem to be overwhelmed, collective effort in heterogeneous groups is needed for wise decision making. Millennials are willing to make collaborative decisions, but if vanity on both sides leads to a stand off because of generational differences, appropriate decision making cannot happen. Today's leaders need strong discernment, which may be defined as the "ability to regulate one's thinking in the acquisition and application of knowledge to make decisions that are right, fair, and just". Excellent discernment in a VUCA world is a result of joint decision making in heterogeneous teams. One crucial factor for organizational survival and success is, therefore, successful collaboration, especially between Baby Boomers and Millennials. The future of organizations in a VUCA world is related to whether these two generations can resolve their conflict and get on with shared leadership.