Leadership in VUCA World

"Leaders need to 'see around corners' - to see something significant about the future that others don't see.'

An apt saying for the current VUCA world, where everything & anything is volatile, uncertain, complex in nature and ambiguous by its presence or absence.

Leaders make plan well in advance and try achieving them by organising resources around those plans. But the reality hits them hard on their faces when these plans are either under achieved or not at all achieved. This can very well be seen in slipping down financial numbers in majority of cases.

Learning by most of executives to my mind is cribbing about the conditions & cursing it, instead of taking appropriate actions. At the same time there are leaders and organisations which undertake diagnostics and change themselves to 180 degree. It therefore means what all needs to be taken into account in this VUCA environment and come out successfully are.

a.     Actions & Comprehension
Clarity in the minds of leaders is the foremost point to succeed. No effective actions can be taken if the clarity is not there about what all needs to be accomplished. Once, the clarity is established, it becomes very easy to channelize resources and people around it.

More VUCA environment, the harder it is for leaders to comprehend the situation. Resulting in the difficulty to comprehend and articulate it. This leads to inaction by leaders or simply following the down trodden path of reaction.

Therefore, it is of utmost importance to articulate well what all to be accomplished and actions should not stop.

b.     Higher in position, tougher to articulate an objective
It is seen that inaction starts at the top. Any immobilisation at the top has multiplication effect at the bottom. Leaders are being watched by their followers. They watch you for your every action & inaction and accordingly make up their minds to take actions or not.

Leaders need to force themselves to get clarity in their own minds and let their subordinates know how they see things. Articulation and corresponding actions will become easy for both leaders and their subordinates respectively.

c.      Look for Actions and not for Right actions
I believe ‘one cannot see future with clarity and therefore it is almost impossible whatever one does will test the testimony of time and will come out right.’

Instead of fighting for the right actions, it is imperative to take actions. Correct the actions on way, if required.

d.     Establishing a Common Purpose
Objective in hand will give leaders required insight on continuum. Objective also will give a common purpose for the people to align their actions.

Leaders could not see that their incapability to bring people around one common purpose will eventually be fatal for the organisation. Only thing they may see or in most cases may not, the date of fatality.

e.      Lead by Values
When everything around is so ambiguous that a decision cannot be taken, leaders should lead themselves by following their values.


Value your values. I believe in ‘When going gets tougher, hold tight to your values’. Any slippage on your values will put you on a wrong path. Leaders need to make their organisations ‘to be values led’. Mind it everybody is watching you.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best Practices for Employer Branding

Amongst various trending topics in HR acreage “Employer Branding” tops the list. Employer branding is the progression of promoting a company (organization), as the employer of choice to a preferred target group whom a company needs and wants to recruit and then retain. The process of employer branding enables the company’s capability in attracting, recruiting and retaining employees (Talent) in hiring and helps to achieve company’s business objectives. Employer branding, moves in line with the growth of economy. In the Indian Job Outlook Survey 2012 conducted by TJinsite, research and knowledge arm of TimesJobs.com that recruiters have to push frontiers to construct brand attractiveness to make skilful talents contemplate on their employment opportunities. Employer Brand is the perception that emanates to the mind when someone hears about your company’s name; hence we can say that the business’s success is strongly associated with the perception of the stakeholders and applicants an...
Read more
Stress Loans: Will banks be unwilling to give loans to 'fair' companies? It is said that business is not done by 'self' investment but by 'borrowed' money from banks and individual investors. It is primarily banks & other financial institutions that extend lending facility as they are meant for this purpose. But they themselves are in a BUSINESS & business, of course, means profit. In last two decades, as the Indian economy opened up, banks & other institutions helped in achieving GDP growth by extending facility to old & new business to expand further. Bust as it is said, every coin has two sides - positive & negative. It is seen of late by published data that some seems to be taking undue advantage of this opportunity. This gets validated by many facts like when one hears that 'someone' did not pay back his loan. It becomes more serious when collateral are not worthy ensuring to recover loans given. If it is due to fai...
Read more

Pricing- a victim of IT Revolution

Businesses have undergone tremendous change due to information revolution. Pricing, which was in the hands of producers has shifted into the hands of customers. Today, marking up profit by simply jacking up prices is no longer possible. Transparency, customer awareness and easy modes to compare have changed the whole mechanism of pricing. In older days, margins were decided whimsically by different decision makers leading to various pricing techniques. I feel that pricing techniques were all depended upon who were deciding them. Cost-Plus Pricing was a long-time favorite to Finance Managers. Likewise, Customer – Driven technique was a favorite of Sales Professionals and Market-Share Pricing Technique was liked by Marketing Managers. Let’s look at, Cost Plus Pricing Technique. It was decided keeping in view primarily Unit Cost. The notion was that if ‘fixed’ cost is allocated to each unit and a margin is added to it that will give a price for a product; without realizing the f...
Read more