Vaill (1996, p. 55) turns once again to the holistic and unified nature of this mode of learning:
“For all its significance, learning as a way of being is a rather prosaic phrase for the key concept of this book, but the phrase was deliberately chosen. One of the characteristics of the contemporary education and training world is a proliferation of catchy acronyms and labels that supposedly lend weight and credence to the newest learning technique or theory. Learning as a way of being is not necessarily a catchy label, and this is consistent with the descriptive problem that learning as a way of being poses. If we are trying to envision a learning process that is more personal, more present, and more continual than institutional learning, we should try to talk about it in a way that is as true as possible to the way that it operates. A learning process that is a way of being may be many things, but one thing it probably is not is a static list of verbal characteristics that can be summed up in brief labels.”
This perspective on learning is, as Vaill, mentions truly out of line with the traditional approach to the identification of specific management characteristics and behaviors. Furthermore, as Vaill notes, learning-as-a-way-of-being is not easy to market or even fully comprehend. Like all matters concerning the Essence of some phenomenon (in this case learning and leadership in turbulent environments) there is only the journey inward toward the “heart of the matter” and rarely a completed journey. That which is the Essence is elusive—but worth the search.
From Contradiction to Integration
We live in a world that is filled not just with turbulence—but also with contradictions. Each of the other five conditions of VUCA-Plus adds to and amplifies these contradictions. With volatility, complexity and ambiguity come many opportunities for opposing views of the world to emerge. Uncertainty leaves us in an anxious state of anticipation: we are waiting for the next dissonant element to emerge. Yet, it is in the state of contradiction that we find the Essence of Diversity—an important form of Essence that I described in my previous essay on Essence. While it is tempting to always view Essence as a matter of Singularity, there is a very powerful way in which Essence is found in the midst of Diversity. No better expression of the power can be found then in the guiding principle of E Pluribus Unum (“Out of many, one”) to be found on the Great Seal of the United States of America.
I turn one last time to the insights offered by Parker Palmer. He quotes Neils Bohr, the renown physicist: “The opposite of a true statement is a false statement, but the opposite of a profound truth can be another profound truth.” (Palmer, 1990, p. 15) The challenge thus becomes one of moving beyond the debate regarding truth and false (and the resulting casting off of contradiction). We move to an Essence-based search for the insights and truths to be found in both sides of a perspective and in a diversity of practices. It all starts with the distinction to be drawn between complicated and complex systems. System theorists seem to be particularly intrigued with those systems that are complex (having many connected parts) and, as a result, are dynamic. Each of these complex, adaptive systems will yield interesting and often surprising outcomes. Those systems that are complicated (having many parts that are unrelated to one another) will pale by comparison to those that are complex. However, complicated systems may often be much harder to manage or attack than are the complex ones. Put simply, it is much harder to attend to any one part of a complicated system given that there are many parts–and each part operates separately from the other parts.
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