We begin on the left side of this model. I proposed several decades ago that we are now living in a postmodern world (Bergquist, 1993). I have since proposed in multiple documents (Bergquist, 2020; Bergquist, 2022; Bergquist, 2024a; Bergquist, Sandstrom and Mura, 2023) that this postmodern world is saturated with the challenging conditions of vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, turbulence and contradictions (VUCA-Plus). While we can seek to escape from these challenges by entering a rabbit hole where a distorting Serenity exists, we can instead engage in a transformative process that enables us to make constructive and creative use of these six VUCA-Plus conditions.
The six arrows leading from the postmodern box in this graph point to the central figure in this graph which is what I am calling a “lens of essentials. This lens serves one of four functions. It can provide convergence, enabling us to sort out what is essential from that which is less important. Second, the lens can magnify by highlighting and providing detailed attention to that which is essential. The lens can serve an important third function. It can provide divergence by expanding our vision of that which is essential. A fourth function is served when the lens provides extension. We can look into the future to determine what is likely to emerge as essential.
On the right side of the lens in this graphic are six lines that point toward a box on the right of the graphic that is identified as the Essential State. These lines represent the transformations that are taking place with regard to each of the six VUCA-Plus conditions. It is through the use of convergence, magnification, divergence and extension that we can transform volatility into a process of anchoring and can transform uncertainty into a thoughtful discernment of the type of issues being confronted in our postmodern world. I address both of these transformations in the first essay in this series. I turn in this essay to the transformations that can be engaged via an Essential lens in addressing the challenges of complexity, ambiguity, turbulence and contradiction.
Assessment of Essential Outcomes
Before I address these four Essential transformations, I wish to address an important matter related to the polystatic process I introduced in the previous essay. This process is critical to the dynamic transformations I am proposing. At the heart of this process is the ongoing cybernetic attention to the established baselines and Essential outcomes of the projects and programs in which we are engaged. Ultimately, the VUCA-Plus transformations are being made on behalf of these projects and programs. It is important (even critical) to know how we are doing and what can be learned from and what adjustments can be made in our project or program based on ongoing assessments.
In most cases, there are multiple outcomes to be assessed. While a project or program might have only one essential outcome, it is more common to find this project or program being assigned several outcomes. Establishment of a realistic polystatic baseline can be challenges given the presence of multiple desired outcomes, each of which can impact the nature and level of the baseline. It may be appropriate to portray the baseline as a target with multiple baselines being positioned on the target at varying degrees of difference from one another. At times, the baseline outcomes might even be positioned at opposite (contradictory) sides of the target from one another (Weitz and Bergquist, 2024). In many instances, however, the baseline outcomes stand not in opposition to one another but instead beside (complementary) one another—as is the case when transformations from complexity to enablement take place.
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