Do you find yourself overwhelmed by the pace of change?

Here is what one of my clients very vulnerably shared with me:

“The big challenge I am facing is the uncertain world coming my way. My clients, marketplace, technology. people, processes, financial targets, span of control are all now very complex. Due to the pace of change all over, it has created a new normal – an uncertain world”

VUCA is an acronym used by the American Military to describe extreme conditions in the cold war. It stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. The rapidity of change is the fiercest challenge individuals face today. In saying this I spent several hours diving into the complexities this brings, along with what can be done from a leadership perspective:

Instill and promote workplace transparency

Transparency matters for a company’s culture, because it builds trust and stronger relationships between employees, management and the company itself. Keeping everyone in the loop leads to more collaboration and shared learning, greater creativity, faster problem-solving which eliminates going back and forth and ultimately improved performance. Most important, it keeps leaders honest. It’s hard to hold an out-of-whack perspective if there’s an abundance of open information pointing in a different direction. I am of the opinion that transparency should be one of the core values of any organisation and more time should be spent thinking about to keep it truly engrained in the culture as organisations grow.

Encourage your team to promote candid conversations with senior leadership. Hold a monthly Q&A session whereby these concerns can be dealt with in a respectful manner that allows individuals to feel comfortable raising concerns and speaking their minds. Remember the goal is to illicit information and seek collaborative solutions that work for both you and the organisation.

Have an appetite to learn

Knowledge is power. However, there are also cycles of knowledge relevance. Knowledge that is vital today may very well be irrelevant tomorrow. Hence, in a VUCA world, leaders need to have:

1. The desire to learn: This puts the leader ahead of the learning curve to attain the necessary knowledge and skill sets in order to be successful in the present and also to have the foresight to anticipate the challenges in the future.
2. The humility to unlearn: Much of the failures experienced by leaders and organisations are due to their unwillingness to innovate and explore new ways of doing things. The arrogance of insisting that “it has always worked in the past” will only bring calamity in the future.
3. The urgency to relearn: When it comes to surviving and even thriving in a VUCA environment, timeliness in taking the right action is of utmost importance. This can only happen when leaders and their teams have a sense of urgency to quickly gain new knowledge and skills to address the new realities.

Get used to being uncomfortable and embrace change

A VUCA environment is all about change. Very often these changes are forced upon us whether we like them or not. Effective leaders don’t resist change.

When change does happen, good leaders are neither surprised by it nor reject it. Good leaders embrace change.In fact, great leaders change before change is even needed. They are always ahead of the innovation curve. These leaders have great strategic insights to anticipate VUCA conditions. Consequently, they will build strategies, processes, culture and crisis management plans to successfully mitigate difficult times.

I hope these tips were valuable to you. Let me know what you think can be done to succeed in these uncertain times?

Founder and CEO of Elite Performers. Shiraaz is a Leadership, Career Coach and NLP practitioner who writes on leadership and management challenges. He also targets other areas of personal and professional development.

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