VUCA is deservedly becoming the coin-of-the-realm among those who assess, plan and predict while serving in the mid-21st Century role of leader or expert. The challenges associated with VUCA are deservedly considered large in number and size. To make matters even more “realistic”—and challenging—I have added two other aspects to VUCA. As I have noted, they are turbulence and contradiction. Both of these aspects are interwoven in the tapestry of VUCA. They each add a further layer of challenge to that now being faced by us in our mid-21st Century society. Turbulence concerns the interplay between rapid change, cyclical change, stagnation and chaos within our current world. Contradiction concerns the ongoing delivery of messages that are each perfectly valid. However, each message offers quite different perspectives on and interpretations of reality.
We must make decisions in settings that are filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Decisions must be made in a turbulent environment that is swirling with contradictory versions of reality and polarizing values. We are worn out having to grapple every day with the conditions of VUCA-Plus. Many observers of our contemporary social condition have gone so far as to suggest that this an era of Great Exhaustion (e.g. Newport, 2016; Stoycheva, 2022). Thoughtful consideration and caring compassion are required—even when we are overloaded and tired. Furthermore, analyses we have made and decisions we have enacted are subject to frequent review and modification as we try to navigate a turbulent and contradictory VUCA world. This would certainly have been the case with those characters from Oz who have been transported into the 21st Century.
Volatility
Volatility refers to the dynamics of change: its accelerating rate, intensity and speed as well as its unexpected catalysts. We would find volatility impacting on the retreat of Dorothy from the world in which she was suddenly placed. The Scarecrow would have been distorting reality so that he could cope with the volatile changes swirling around him, and we might find that some of Reich’s “madness” had to do with his attempts to make sense of a volatile post WWII world. He insisted (like Freud) on moving out beyond the confines of the therapist office and this got him in big trouble. Unlike Wilhelm Reich, the Wizard of Oz would have fared well under conditions of volatility, for a smart “huckster” can sell anything if it promises an escape from a world in which change is occurring everywhere: “I need an elixir to save not just my hair but also my sanity!” While Reich was selling his own “elixir” (the orgone accumulator), it was to treat something much more controversial than hair growth. He got into big trouble.
To move beyond this straightforward statement regarding Volatility, we point to two different—and polarizing opposites—regarding how volatility actually operates. Imagine a left and right column positions on a graphic with the meeting ground in the middle between these columns being initially empty—leaving the content of these two columns polarized from one another (Johnson, 1996). The Left Column perspective on volatility would be centered on Commitment in the midst of volatility. This perspective concerns being faithful. We take action in a consistent and sustained manner. In this way, other people can readily understand and predict our behavior. Dorothy was not consistent and thereby isolated from her neighbors.
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