BUS603: Managing People

Change and challenge is everywhere.

At no time in our human history has the human race faced so many changes on so many fronts. These seismic changes are challenging the very essence of who we are, how we think, how we relate and how we work. How leaders chose to live the questions as the waves of societal, economic, business, organizational, technological and ecological changes and uncertainty sweep through us, our families, our communities and our organizations will determine the fates and well‐being of many: shaping both our individual and collective ability to sink or swim in the tides of unceasing change and transformation.

Johansen helpfully coined the acronym VUCA to describe today's world. VUCA is shorthand for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. While leaders have always worked in VUCA worlds what is new and different is the scale and intensity of the changes. It is this scale and intensity, which consigns predictive planning, yesterday's logic and linear thinking to the scrapheap.

Leaders everywhere have both a pivotal and a very privileged role and responsibility in creating the conditions that will help themselves and others to reflect and innovate: to make sense and meaning of all that is happening to inform wise actions which are in service of both the personal and the collective well‐being.