The times they are a changin'

VUCA. In other words, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Our last key words to try and describe the situation we are all involved in as of late.

How to respond to these new challenges? How to ensure long lasting profitability in such an environment?

We believe that Agility and Collaboration are the answers. Fostering intrinsic motivation in our employees, putting them in a state of Flow, in this thin line between too much a difficulty, and too much a stretch of talents, that allows people to grow, in a sustainable way.

Why Agility?

Because against VUCA, there is but one solution: embrace change. Not manage it! Embrace it! Become a learning organisation, that has the required level of agility to tackle new challenges, wether business or organisational ones, wether they are extrinsic or intrinsic. Learn how to become efficient in decision making processes (Anticipation, Decision, Execution), and to have that capacity to embark people in new unpredicted direction, to ensure survival. If Darwin said that the world allows for the survival of the fittest, we would say that actual conditions favour the survival of the most agile, the one most capable of adapting to ever changing conditions.

And there is a clear link between employees attitude and behavior and the overall capacity to satisfy customers by becoming client focused on the outside, and talent focused on the inside. And as much as we would like our organisations to be self-organizing, we know that some institutional support is needed to ensure fast and clear adoption of these new agile behaviors: encouraging empowerment, rewarding risk taking, efficiently managing skills and being able to foresee the ones we will miss in the short term and so forth.

So, are you agile enough to tackle VUCA?