The VUCA acronym stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity and it describes a turbulent environment, often referred in the context of leadership theories.
The VUCA world has been characterized by many interconnected parts and variables and although information was available, it is typical for the VUCA environment that the amount of it is overwhelming as well as difficult to process. In addition, the causal relationships are not clear, and this leads to complexity and even situations of “unknown unknowns”. This makes the problem unstable and posible actions to solve it unclear and uncertain. This all makes the insights of the future working life obscure, unpredictable, fuzzy, and even chaotic.
VUCA components
The VUCA acronym has been presented typically as a cavalier concept that describes the turbulent environment or “unpredictable change” in a uniform way. However, there are also some attempted suggestions to define the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity as separate concepts as well as their suggested interconnectivity. The rationale in understanding the VUCA components also as separate sub-concepts forms an opportunity in a leadership context, and thus it is worth learning for the future professionals that they may act in a role of leading others but at least in leading themselves through self-management.
Volatility is liability for stability and something changing rapidly.
“Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value”. – Jeremy Grantham
Uncertainty relates to the quality of information one has – or the degree to which the outcome of an event is knowable in advance.
“If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.” – Stephen Covey
Complexity increases when there is a greater number of relevant variables or interrelationships; the more variables, the more complex the situation.
“Simplicity is hard to build, easy to use, and hard to charge for. Complexity is easy to build, hard to use, and easy to charge for” – Chris Sacca
Ambiguity occurs when an event, situation, or context is unclear, either because information is missing, inconsistent, contradictory, or obscured in some way.
“There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words” – Thomas Reid
Considering VUCA definition, pedagogy needs to consider all of their components and situate learners at the center of the learning process, wherein the young ones, who are the adults of the future, must have the right to lean a wide variety of skills such as information and communication skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, and interpersonal and self-directional skills.
If you want to learn more about how an educator can start to recognize, explore, and identify VUCA elements present in their current learning environments and work with it you could read our guide book: Facilitate for the future created by Sirpa Hänti, Meiju Keinänen, Maria Välivirta Havia, Hazem Al-Bermanei, Mari Ketola & Jonna Heikkilä.