Boundless Curiosity
Boundless Curiosity
Untangling VUCA: Part 1 - Does it still serve us?
In this episode of Boundless Curiosity, hosts Brandon and Jason dive deep into the concept of VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Originating from the U.S. military’s strategic thinking in the late 20th century, VUCA has since become a In this episode of Boundless Curiosity, hosts Brandon and Jason dive into the concept of VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Originating from the U.S. military’s strategic thinking in the late 20th century, VUCA has since become a foundational framework for understanding the chaotic and rapidly changing landscape of modern business and leadership.
We touch on alternative frameworks like TUNA (Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, Ambiguous) and BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible), questioning if military strategies truly fit the business world. Through personal anecdotes, including navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, we explore whether VUCA has become a crutch for poor management or if its relevance has waned over time. How does VUCA affect different sectors and personal lives?
Finally, we discuss the unique challenges brought by rapid technological advancements and global interconnectedness, and how leaders can balance quick execution with strategic reflection. Using examples from industries like healthcare and technology, we set the stage for our next episode, where we'll offer actionable insights on thriving in a VUCA environment.
Hey Jason, very excited to jump into a conversation today on VUCA. How are you doing today, my friend?
Jason:Doing pretty well. How about you, Brandon?
Brandon:Yeah, everything's great, everything's great. Really been looking forward to the opportunity to hop on this call and have this conversation and also share it with our listeners.
Jason:I agree, and I think this is going to be one of those foundational concepts is where it kind of come back and keep addressing and keep kind of bringing up throughout our time just talking about different topics. So absolutely, I think this is going to be a cool conversation.
Brandon:I agree Foundational, and I was thinking about kind of the flow of the podcast. Last time we spent some time talking about curiosity and why it's so important. But when we think about, part of the importance of curiosity is it's needed to operate in this VUCA environment. When I say VUCA, I imagine many of our listeners are familiar with this, this acronym V-U-C-A. When we say VUCA, that's what we're referring to, but kind of curious, when you hear VUCA, what do you think of Jason? It's a topic that we're familiar with, but it almost sounds like maybe a smoothie. I'm going to go have a VUCA smoothie. Or maybe it's the name of a robot, kind of like WALL-E, but VUCA instead. It's kind of a peculiar term.
Jason:It is a peculiar term of a peculiar term. It is a peculiar term and actually what came up for me when you were talking about VUCA is it sounds a little bit like the name of University of Georgia's mascot. Isn't that like UGA or UGA, uga.
Brandon:Yeah, it is UGA, so it is a strange name. That could mean a lot of different things and maybe our listeners are already familiar with this. I feel like if you're in the adult development, human-centered development space, you probably know the term, but maybe many of our listeners do not necessarily know it so well.
Jason:Yeah. So we thought we'd kick it off with just a little bit of history and context of this acronym, vuca, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. And for those who haven't looked and sort of researched a little bit about like where it came from, it popped up in like the 1980s, 1990s and even though it's a big topic in leadership and organizational development now, it actually came out of the US military and as the US military was thinking about like what things were going to be like as a Cold War started to kind of cool down or maybe it's heat up, I don't know which one started to kind of run down a little bit and this weird stability that it provided started to break down. The US military coined this term and they were thinking about it in terms of like fighting the next war, like it wasn't to break down. The US military coined this term and they were thinking about it in terms of like fighting the next war, like it wasn't going to be, you know, two big conventional armies, like fighting like standing toe to toe. It was going to be something different.
Jason:It would be little little things popping up, little conflicts popping up all over the place. Maybe the lines wouldn't be as clear as to whom the good guys and whom the bad guys were. So that's its origin and since then it has been kind of taken on by the business community and by academia and also leadership and organizational development as a way for businesses, for leaders, to think about the kind of challenges that they face now, for leaders to think about the kind of challenges that they face now. And I'm curious, brandon, first off, what would you add to that brief history of VUCA? And then, secondly, I'm curious where you first heard the term Jason.
Brandon:Fabulous rundown with really nothing to add from my perspective. I think I've shared with our listeners that I was in the Army circa around the early 2000s and, interestingly, I don't think that I heard the term while I was in the military, so it isn't something that's that pervasive, at least not in my experience. But I certainly feel like some of the things I encountered while I was in the military certainly fits the description of VUCA. I probably mentioned to our listeners that I deployed to Iraq twice in the early 2000s. So, as you're thinking about the war in Iraq, it being an unconventional war where we're looking more at an insurgency than a conventional ground force, some of this volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity certainly showed up.
Brandon:However, I don't think I was actually exposed to the term, not during my master's studies even, but when I started working on my PhD in organizational development, it was very much something that we were talking about. As we're thinking about how organizations operate, how leaders need to show up, the concept that we're in this VUCA milieu is very important to consider our approach. So that's where it's shown up for me and where I was exposed to it, and we can certainly spend some time talking about our personal experience with VUCA, whether that's individually or with organizations, but I'll stop there and maybe flip it back to you. I'm curious to hear where you were exposed to the concept as well.
Jason:It's so funny. You were in the military, you were in the army and didn't hear it there. I was in the intelligence community and I didn't hear it there either. Junior officers sitting around coming up with this term. It was probably very senior officers sitting around at like a war college, like up in Carlisle or somewhere, like you know, thinking through the nature of the challenge and they could coining this acronym, which, which the military is is, is if they do one thing exceptionally well, it's coming up with acronym.
Brandon:So make sense. Spot on, yes, they are fabulous at that.
Jason:But yeah, so I didn't hear it in the intelligence community, I heard it in in my my first like when I became a coach. So I went through Georgetown's university's coaching certification program and it was introduced to us early on in that program is kind of a foundational concept that leaders were going to be grappling with who we would then be coaching. And you know my reaction to it when I first heard it is that it just made sense right, like it captured, I think, what I had felt as a people manager over the years, as somebody who led teams, as somebody who was kind of that leader of leaders level who led teams, somebody who was kind of that leader of leaders level. You know the volatility and uncertainty absolutely made sense. I don't think I quite understood the complexity angle to it as well. I think that has kind of developed over the years and you know, I think that initial reaction is something that I'm curious from you, like when you first heard VUCA in your PhD program, like how did it land with you, the concept?
Brandon:I don't necessarily recall, jason, but it is a fantastic question and something I've really been grappling with in recent years is trying to not necessarily accept things at face value but really think critically about them and try and interpret them and make sense and meaning of them for myself, versus just wholesale accepting the concept. You talked about these different elements of VUCA and how maybe some resonated with you and some didn't. So I just want to call out, maybe for our listeners, each one of these elements in turn as we hear about them. So, thinking about volatility, I think about things being rapid and unpredictable, changing quickly.
Brandon:Uncertainty is very much in the same vein. It's very unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen next. Complexity, a lot of interconnected parts and then ambiguity is maybe a lack of clarity about the future or what things mean. Now what occurs to me is that this VUCA concept, as you look at each of those individual elements, it's so all-encompassing. I can almost think of any phenomenon and fit it into one of those four categories, and I think maybe some of the strengths of VUCA is that it's so broad and encompassing, and maybe it's one of the limitations as well that I could almost take anything going on in the world and say, yep, that's VUCA and really put it into that categorization. So that's something that I'm sitting with as I think about VUCA how it's defined and how it serves us.
Jason:You know, and I think you're getting at something really, really interesting here, and that's this idea that, like that, this is something, this is a term, this is a phenomenon that is like unique to our 21st century world. What's your take on that? Is VUCA something that's like that has just popped up in the late 80s and now we're like sitting with it, or is it like a longer, more enduring thing?
Brandon:Fascinating question and I lean towards VUCA maybe just being part of our human condition Throughout history. If you were to look at how humans have interacted, maybe if we were to go back in time to World Wars, for example, I would imagine you would talk to people during that time and they didn't have the verbiage VUCA, but it very much fit that description. Or a stock market crash, or we're trying to eradicate polio, for example, or even going back further in time where you have nations conquering other nations and there's war. Maybe the complexity piece doesn't fit as much. I feel like complexity might be something inherent in our times. I could make that argument, but I could also make the argument that anytime you are dealing with people, with humans, that is a complex phenomenon. There is no easy answer, easy solution to that and I'll just give a personal example for myself.
Brandon:When I think about VUCA, I feel like I'm very much in a VUCA season in my life. You know, jason, that my brother recently passed away after a years-long battle with cancer. But it was very sudden. We thought he had more time than what he had and he passed away very quickly. I was just sharing before we pressed record that I was in the ER this weekend because my wife was having a little bit of health challenges. I got into a fender bender this weekend while I was picking up some medication from the pharmacy. So it's just this everything unpredictable, ambiguous. Again, nothing related to our overarching societal phenomenons that are occurring. It's just part of my human existence right now. So I would say it's just part of my human existence right now. So I would say it's just part of being a person. But curious to hear if you think differently.
Jason:You know, first of all, I appreciate you sharing a little bit of how it pops up in your life and I think I tend to agree. I think when I first heard the term, I was probably guilty of accepting it for what it was. You know, I felt like it described everything. I think you did a really nice job of kind of saying like wow, it is kind of like a kitchen sink term, right, like it does kind of capture all of these things. I think, the more that I've interacted with the term, I think it is, I think it like, I think we probably it resonates because we probably live in like a high VUCA time. And if I, if I were to think about like, maybe how it shows up, it maybe it's a little bit like the tide right when it comes in and there's a high tide and VUCA is like turned up really, really high and then it kind of recedes and and maybe those are times when we're in a little bit more of a stable state, a little bit more of a state of flow, um, I, I think our um, like our understanding of our times, probably like factor in as well and I think we like one of the reasons why I think now feels so disorienting as things are shifting so quickly. Um, you know, you never know what's going to happen. So I think that's my take now. The other thing that has kind of shifted for me as I think about VUCA is I've largely started thinking about VUCA as just complexity, because I think complexity captures. I think an inherent in complexity is volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity, and I, and so I, one of my interactions with VUCA is to drop three of the four letters and really focus on on, uh, complexity, um, I, I also. I also totally agree and resonate with what you said.
Jason:One of the places I see VUCA popping up most is just in in interactions with people. You know you never know what's going on behind the scenes, like, for example, when we got on this call. You know, I knew about some of your, you know some of, like the, the, the VUCA that's been showing up for you, but I didn't know you got into Fender Bender, you know. I think that factors in anytime you're in like a high meaning conversation. I mean the other person in front of you has this completely different world that lives inside of them, that has all of these stories, that has all of these you know good things and these pieces of baggage that they carry along with them that subtly or not so subtly affect that conversation.
Jason:And that's to me a really good example of how VUCA pops up just randomly, you know, and it's just an interaction with a person and you know, and so that's sort of how I've started thinking about VUCA, that's sort of how I've started thinking about VUCA very much embodied in the human experience by humans, and I think that makes it I think it's helpful for me to think of it that way, because that also lets me off the hook for thinking that there's an easy answer to the challenge I might be facing, especially if there's a person involved. And kind of, with that said, you've given us a couple examples of VUCA that you've seen a couple in your personal life, and you've hinted to a couple others. But are there any examples that kind of stand out as being helpful and illustrative around this concept?
Brandon:Well, I'll jump into some examples in a moment, but I do want to just pull the thread on a couple of things you highlighted there. Talk about complexity or ambiguity, but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it, I suppose, and I've been interested to hear other terms similar to VUCA I don't know if you've heard of this term BANI, b-a-n-i. Brittle, anxious, nonlinear and incomprehensible, so very much in the same vein as VUCA, just another fancy acronym. But the other one I came across and this was new to me was tuna, going back to this idea that maybe VUCA could be some type of smoothier food where we have tuna which is turbulent, uncertain, novel and ambiguous, and maybe we should shift the conversation and start talking about tuna instead of VUCA.
Brandon:I love a good tuna sandwich myself. I don't know how you feel about them.
Jason:My wife loves tuna. I'm lukewarm on tuna. I like I love tuna when it comes to sushi or when I can grill it. So I'm on, I'm on board from from that perspective. Well, and it's so interesting too that like I mean like so just to kind of piggyback off where you're going there. You know, I think one of the ways that my thinking has changed on VUCA is that I'm a little suspect that a term that was coined by the US military for fighting wars could just be immediately applicable to business, and I'm like it's like okay, are we losing something in here? Is there something that we're not quite examining? It is interesting that VUCA wasn't enough right now. So we've got BANI and TUNA now to add to it. So there does seem to be something going on there. But thank you for bringing those into my awareness, because I'd heard of BANI but I hadn't heard of TUNA.
Brandon:Glad I could school you on something there, Jason. So I encourage you to drop TUNA into your future coaching conversations or maybe some of your facilitation. I think people would get a kick out of that.
Jason:It sounds like a Tuna problem to me.
Brandon:This is all Tuna. This stinks like Tuna is what we could say about some of these challenges that we're faced with. To your point about whether this military term applies to our business world, whether this military term applies to our business world, I often am a little skeptical about some of the recommendations or books or podcasts or talks that look at SEAL, team 6 or Delta Force as a case study of how we need to apply leadership in the business world. While those things, those examples, are very exciting and glamorous, I do wonder to what extent it's applicable to what goes on in the business world. I think those are very unique, extreme examples and certainly we could probably learn a little bit from bits and pieces of those. But I don't know how well the context matches To your point of maybe it's high tide, low tide. See if I can get that out high tide, low tide. The term was introduced 40 years ago. Is it the case that 40 years later, we're still in the same VUCA environment? Is it still applicable? I'm not certain, but I do want to get back to your question. Don't want to ignore it around when I've really seen it show up in my life. I shared that.
Brandon:Personally, I'm going through some VUCA right now, and maybe that's just top of mind for me, because that's what's going on for me. I think in my personal life I'm seeing it right now. I think we could all point to COVID potentially as a very VUCA time for many of us. I was very fortunate to have a job that I could work from home, but my spouse at the time she was in health care, so she was going into the office or the hospital rather, and we didn't know could she be around the kids, what the future was going to look like in terms of whether we would get back to normal. So I think that was a very Bucca example. And then, lastly for me, of course, my experience within the military going to Iraq twice and doing my first deployment at a very young age. It just was not something I felt mentally prepared for and that probably exacerbated that VUCA experience for me.
Brandon:So I see it showing up quite a bit in different seasons of my life and I think people all individually experience this. Covid's an example where we're all experiencing it together. But you might be going through a very stable time in your life right now, jason, whereas I'm deeply experiencing VUCA. So while we talk about it as this broad social phenomenon that we're all working against. I don't know if that's true for everyone and I also don't know if that's true in every profession, certainly in those professions that are navigating complex market conditions. And if you're really in a position where you're working in the strategy of an organization I accomplish, there may not be as much VUCA showing up for me. So maybe we overestimate or over-exaggerate how it shows up for people. I don't know.
Jason:No, I think you're going so first off, like when, like 40 years ago, like that makes it definitely makes me feel old when I think back about like when did it originate? Um, but um, I, I think you're, I think you're right that, like we need to be looking at, like, we need to be looking critically at the concept, because I think that, like, at some point, like it starts to become an excuse, um, and, and that's something that like, that um, like to me, like maybe it's an indication that, like it's indication that it's starting to outlive its usefulness. It's like, well, this is just VUCA, and what I mean by it can be an excuse is it can be an excuse for poor communication, it could be an excuse for changing the goalposts, it can be an excuse for poor project management. I mean different, different things that like go wrong. Like, yeah, it could be an example of VUCA, but it isn't necessarily let us off the hook for feel like and I certainly hope that I'm entering a little bit more of a stable point in my life, as you, as you know, you know, I left the federal government in about five years ago now and that kicked off a really high VUCA period of my life.
Jason:We we moved from Virginia to Colorado. We moved my mom in with my sister in Colorado, covid happened. My mom passed away, not from COVID, but in the middle of that. We ended up moving back to Virginia. You know I took a position that turned out to be a really poor fit.
Jason:There's also something incredibly unsettling about having other people pack up your stuff and moving long distances without the little things that are comfortable to you. Moving is an incredibly high VUCA experience high VUCA experience. But as we settled into our new house, a new position in a new company, it started to feel a little less VUCA. And I think one of the interesting things that I've noticed in me is that my personality is that when I feel like I'm settling in, I'll start to look for things to like, either move toward or to worry about. And at this point I'm really just trying to enjoy a period of relative stability and peace and happiness, without trying to predict or prevent something popping up that might disrupt that, because that's one of the things about VUCA is you can't, you can't do it. So that's one of the things I've been trying to do, as I've experienced, is just really trying to find the peace, trying to find the stability, trying to find a little bit of the flow amidst complexity of the flow amidst complexity.
Brandon:Thanks for sharing those examples, jason. That's really helpful and I really appreciate that you brought out this concept or this question or curiosity around. Can VUCA be a little bit of a crutch at times? Is it somewhat of an excuse? And I hate to or rather I don't want to come off as brash and just sweep under the rug the challenges that people face, the stress, the uncertainty of this tuna world that we're living in, or VUCA, whichever you want to refer to it as and I also do wonder if it has become, going back to this idea, that it's such a catch-all I can put almost anything into this VUCA categorization that if my project doesn't succeed, I might say to my leadership or my team well, of course, it didn't succeed.
Brandon:We're in this VUCA environment. I couldn't anticipate these things, or maybe I'm reluctant to make a decision and I'm very indecisive in the moment, and I might attribute it again to the VUCA environment that I'm faced with. So it leads to indecisiveness, it leads to not having a clear strategy, it leads to unclear communication and I think that is somewhat of a tightrope that you have to walk around, recognizing VUCA and the challenges that it might present, but also still being willing to take ownership, to take action, to develop a strategy, even if you do have to be adaptable in how you execute that strategy. So in some ways, I fear that the term is maybe becoming a little bit stale and maybe we need to move our thinking beyond VUCA or just think about it in more nuanced ways. And I remember having a conversation with you months ago maybe it's even a year now and you surfaced that, jason, that maybe VUCA isn't serving us anymore, maybe it has become stale, maybe we need to think of something differently. So I'm curious if you would share your thoughts around that.
Jason:Yeah, that popped into my head because it's a term like VUCA, like it has its place and at some point we're not going to be talking about it anymore. And I think I was describing kind of like well, how do we move into, like a post-VUCA world? I'm not sure that that's the right phrasing and I'm not even sure that that's possible, especially like this conversation. I think it's baked into the human experience to some degree. But maybe how do we move into a time when the tide of VUCA is less than it is now, where we have a little bit more stability, a little bit more flow? I think you're getting at, you know, a couple of a couple of the things needed to navigate. You know a VUCA world and we're going to get into those in our next episode. But you said something I wanted to just highlight a little bit, and that's this idea of kind of walking a tightrope.
Jason:When I think about complexity, I think oftentimes there isn't a clear answer. In fact, even worse, there are two possible answers, if not more, and they're in tension with each other. So if I choose one, I feel like it comes at the expense of the other. And so I think, like we're, oftentimes we're left holding a tension between two important things, and that's uncomfortable. You know, there's a lack of kind of clarity there. There's a persistence to the challenge of having to do that rather than just be able to make a decision and then putting it behind you. So, you know, I think like and I'm kind of going off of kind of straying a bit from where your question is but I think that to me some of the best parts of VUCA is that we named something that's part of the human experience and maybe that's made a little bit more like object right, like a little bit more like where we have a little bit more agency and capability and then start to work with it rather than being just subject to it. Right, then that's just kind of subject, object theory. That I'm sure we'll touch on at some point. I think that's that's one of the best pieces of it. I think it also raises some really interesting kind of human-centered ways of kind of working with it, and it probably has to do with things like you know, polarity management, like good communication, like listening, more things of that nature.
Jason:I think, you know, another really good thing about it is that it has made me start to think about things that I'm attached to, because if I think about like well, why does VUCA exist? Right, like, why does this feel uncomfortable? It's probably because I'm attached to some sort of outcome. You know, I'm moving towards something or I want to prevent something, and that makes the feeling of like, volatility or any part of like the VUCA acronym that much more intense. And so, like, if I can think about like well, you know, are these things that are really important? Or if I can change my relationship to these things, then maybe I can start to manage VUCA a little bit more effectively.
Jason:But you know, that's sort of that's some of my changing thinking, sort of that's some of my changing thinking. Um, and it's starting to get it kind of like, well, like, if it's it, you know it's a concept, it has its benefits, it has its flaws. I mean, we're kind of like taking it through its paces. Um, but like what do you? What do you think in terms of like, like, why it matters for leaders and organizations?
Brandon:now, Before I answer that, jason, you brought up the idea of subject and object and some of our listeners may be familiar with that, but would you just tell us a little bit more about that so our listeners can understand a little bit better what you mean by taking VUCA and making it object?
Jason:Yeah, really good point and so like you could go really deep into this, but just like a quick overview of it is. The idea is that if we're not aware of some sort of dynamic that's at play in our life, when we do become aware of it and then we're able to sort of describe it and maybe even give it a name, then all of a sudden we go from being subject to it right Like it's a force that is acting on us and we don't understand what it is to it being an object that we can then start to work with a little bit more because of that awareness, like we have a little bit more choice with it, so we're not subject to it anymore, it's an object that we can work with. That's what I've heard it described. Have you heard it described differently, or would you add anything to that?
Brandon:That's a perfect description, jason, and the example that I like to use, or one that I've heard that I really appreciate, is an example of like a pair of glasses or a contact lens, for example. Have you heard that as an example?
Jason:I think so, but maybe you can bring it out for example. Have you heard that as an example? I think so, but maybe you can bring it out for us.
Brandon:Yeah. So suppose you have a pair of glasses on and you don't even realize that you have the glasses on and everything you see in the world is filtered through your glasses. It is the paradigm through which you see the world, and VUCA might be similarly a paradigm that we're seeing the world through. It's important for us to recognize that we're seeing the world through. It's important for us to recognize that we're wearing those glasses, to be able to take them off and look at them and say, hey, here are these glasses that I'm wearing and everything I'm seeing in the world is filtered through these lenses. So, taking VUCA instead of a filter and recognizing or maybe it's still the filter, but you know the filters there, if that makes sense.
Jason:Yeah, and when you're describing that, it made me a little bit of like, just like the idea of mindset Right and like what? Like what frame we bring into different interactions, conversations, parts of our lives.
Brandon:Absolutely Before. I before I asked you to explain that. You asked me how I see this showing up for leaders currently of time. I could also make the argument that we are in a very VUCA time frame. That is unique for a couple of different reasons. So I'm kind of making the argument for both sides. One I'm saying yeah, vuca, it's been around forever and there's nothing new here. It's kind of stale. But if I needed to make the argument for why things are so VUCA now, I could easily point to technology, for example AI, and how that's changing the world, and what it means to be a human in this age of AI and what the future of work is going to be, for example.
Brandon:I also think that in terms of complexity, we are probably in the most interconnected time that we have ever been in in the history of the world. The connections that we have through globalization, through the internet you think about a company that's manufacturing something. It's the case that those supplies and the labor might be pulled from different parts of the globe. So there is potentially a reality where we are now in a more VUCA state than we've ever been. So, as a leader, as I'm navigating relationships, as I'm thinking about strategies. I'm trying to solve problems. It would be important to take this concept of VUCA and be aware that it is something to name it, that we are navigating, that we are challenged by, but again, walking that tightrope of I'm not using it as a crutch, as an excuse for not achieving a strategy or setting goals or following through on actions, but instead just being able to scan the horizon and know it's something that needs to be considered.
Jason:Yeah, I love where you went there, like what came up for me while you were talking.
Jason:You know when you're talking about strategy and I think why I see it as mattering is that our kind of our go-to approach doesn't really work as well as other approaches when it comes to interacting with complexity it might.
Jason:What I mean by go-to approach is, um, I see leaders moving really fast all the time and that's something that like that is is it's, it's rewarded, it's sometimes it's effective, um, but like, if we're always kind of go, go, go, we're always kind of looking to move from decision, decision, check things off the of our to-do list, then when it comes to complexity, that we're probably missing stuff and we're probably, um, we're probably not being as strategic, we're probably not being as creative, we're not probably not being as curious um, as we could be, and if we were able to kind of take a step back, do a little bit more in the way of reflecting, of investigating, of planning, of like iterating a little bit through the process, then my hypothesis is is it like in a VUCA environment that's gonna produce better results over the longterm and it's probably gonna produce different results than if we're just going a million miles an hour all the time, so I think that's one of the reasons why it matters to me questioning your ideas around the need to move quickly and accomplish things, because I could almost think of, in a VUCA environment, the need to execute quickly and something I do take away from the military is speed to execution that sometimes we can get, in this analysis, paralysis.
Brandon:So I don't know that I necessarily would have thought about VUCA as needing to be more circumspect in how we approach action, but I could certainly see that aspect of it at times needing to be more strategic. I land more with the adaptability needed to approach a VUCA environment so you can make all the strategy you want. And this idea and I don't know was it Eisenhower that a plan doesn't survive first contact with the enemy Was that an Eisenhower thing? And I think Ali or Tyson said everyone has a plan, so they get punched in the mouth. So there's all these variations around the importance of planning, but also, as you're executing, it may not be the case that everything goes according to plan, and I think that's especially true in a VUCA environment. Did I chop those quotes up, jason? Are you familiar with any of those?
Jason:No, I'm definitely familiar with them. I don't remember who said that the survive first contact thing. I think it was Ali who said the punch in the mouth bit. But you know, I think like that adaptability is absolutely critical. And I'm not saying like go slow to go slow, although I think that's important sometimes but I think the ability to kind of like put something out there and then watch how it's being interacted with by the system and then to be able to take that feedback, create a new iteration of it and then put it back out there, I mean like you can think about it in terms of prototyping, but like you could also develop a decision-making strategy based on that as well, where it's a little bit more, a little bit more adaptable, a little bit more fluid, a little bit more like conversant with feedback, and I think that's one thing I see as important when it comes to dealing with VUCA.
Brandon:I love the way you phrase that, and I think about feedback loops, for example, in particular, as we're thinking about how we're approaching action not getting so determined to execute things the way we had thought about them or planned out initially, but instead, as you mentioned, knowing that things are VUCA, getting that feedback, knowing where we need to adapt. Maybe we need to challenge our assumptions, ways of thinking, ways of showing up, and that's not necessarily always easy. You do a lot of coaching conversations, jason. I'm curious to see or to hear from you when do you see VUCA showing up in those conversations? How are people challenged by this? What is your experience with it?
Jason:Yeah, I mean it shows up all the time. I think it shows up most prominently in how people interact with other people you know, whether it's you know a difficulty in talking to like a boss or in having a difficult conversation with an employee that you know, those are very much like interacting with complexity, because not only are you are you having to navigate like a relationship with another person, but you also might be having to navigate your own not so helpful associations about like what navigating that means and what you're capable of in those moments. So that's very much how I see it and I also see it more on the business side as well, where you know people are, you know, having to go and people having to manage multiple, different, rapidly changing, you know projects or business lines or customers, and that puts you in a place. I think that puts a person in a place of you can again kind of match that increasing workload with more speed and more effort and that kind of opens the door to burnout over time. So I think it invites, especially in a coaching conversation, a little bit more reflection around like, well, how do you create a sustainable approach to this? And like, how do you integrate in some of the things that like might be the like all this work is going to be expensive. Like, for example, like your health, your wellbeing, your family, you know your downtime things that you're passionate about, like outside of work, well-being, your family, you know your downtime things that you're passionate about like outside of work, and so those are absolutely those are regular themes in coaching conversations.
Brandon:Fascinating, Jason, and two things you mentioned there. I want to pull the thread on, but I want to do it lightning round style. So I'm going to ask you two questions and I want to give, I want to hear the bottom line responses to these. And I know this is a challenge because many of these ideas, these concepts, these questions, they don't have easy answers. But we've talked about VUCA and we haven't necessarily talked about how it might impact different industries that people are working in. I would suspect many of our listeners are coming from different types of work, doing different types of things across the world. Is this something that is unique to specific industries? Do you see this expanding across all industries, or maybe something different entirely?
Jason:I think it's expanding across all industries, and part of it is like the startup culture that we have now, where people are actively looking to disrupt industries and long stable industries are ripe for disruption. Was that lightning enough for you?
Brandon:Lightning, love it, and certainly technology would play into that as well, as we think about AI disrupting the type of work that we do and how we do it. I am on board with you and I would also make the case that maybe certain types of industries like if you're working in technology might be a little bit more VUCA than other industries. I do, or have consulted quite a bit in healthcare work and I see that as a very VUCA industry. So thank you for that lightning round response. Here's the second one for you. We've thrown out this idea that, as we are humans within the nature of being human, there is something about it that lends itself to VUCA, and we've talked about relationships being VUCA, and I don't want to just take that concept or that claim as at face value. Talk to me, jason, about what makes it so VUCA to be in relations with other people.
Jason:Yeah, first off, very, very quickly. I think that time is a really big factor here and it's just the fact that all we can really know and understand is the current moment and then our recollection of the past. But time keeps unfolding into the future like we don't know what the hell is going to pop out Like. It's a very VUCA experience and that's very much baked into our experience as human beings. In fact, it's like it might be the frame that we're experiencing.
Jason:But I think when it comes to relationship, you know, like to me, like it, it it comes to two, two completely different inner worlds trying to share some sort of space. And you know, sometimes those are really easy and natural. But oftentimes, when meaning is high, we have different opinions around how we navigate that and we may not even be comfortable voicing all of our opinions. So now the other person is sitting there with like a partial understanding of, like what's meaningful to us, that they're trying to work on, and yet oftentimes, if you're like me, you find yourself expecting them to know all of the different things that are important to you and then to act accordingly, and then that shifts over time. So I'm not the same person I was when I married my wife 22 years ago, but neither is she, and so that's to me. There's, and you could probably keep going and pulling all those threads here, but those are very much to me why relationships are buka.
Brandon:Jason, fabulous answer, and I will say you did not give me the lightning round response to that one. I will let it pass though, since it was such a great response and I love what you're drawing out here around these two inner worlds, I think was the wording you use. But the reality is that no two people see the world exactly the same. We each have our own experience with the world, and then we try and navigate and be interconnected and be in relationship with one another. With these two different ways of seeing the world, we bring our own personality, our own values, our own motives into those relationships. So I will say thumbs up to that, jason. You supported the claim that human relations are VUCA, so I appreciate you doing that. I know we're, we're getting, we're butting up against time. We we talked about trying to keep our episodes around 45 minutes. Curious, what's left unsaid here? What more do we need to say?
Jason:Oh man. No, I definitely wanted to bring in time because I think it's just something that it's part of the frame. Right, it's such a part of the frame and we can't get away from it, and I think that it's one of the things that makes VUCA baked into the human experience is our relationship to time. But I don't know, that was the last thing I really wanted to say. What about you?
Brandon:There's probably so much more to say on this topic and I will share with the listeners that what we spent a lot of time doing today is what I will call admiring the problem.
Brandon:Hey, here's this VUCA thing that exists out here and it's so challenging. What we spent a lot of time doing today is what I will call admiring the problem. Hey, here's this VUCA thing that exists out here and it's so challenging and wow, isn't it difficult. But in keeping with our promise not to give easy answers, we really didn't give any type of answers around how you need to navigate a VUCA environment and we are doing this particular episode as a two-parter, this one part. Today we've really framed up what VUCA is, how we're experiencing it, the history of it, and in our next episode we want to spend some more time thinking about what do leaders need to, how do they need to approach and work in this VUCA environment to be successful and deliver outcomes? So that's coming up in our second episode. Really enjoyed the conversation today, jason, and looking forward to reconnecting in a couple of weeks.
Jason:Yeah, same and yeah, and I love admiring problems, so hopefully we can keep doing that.
Brandon:It really is the key to being a consultant at time. Hey, here's this really cool problem. Let's talk about it and look at it from so many different angles. Trust me, jason, I could do this for hours on end, but do want to get a little more action oriented in our conversations. I will call out to our listeners. Would love to hear from you. We talked about last episode. You could always hit us up at boundlesscuriosityatoutlookcom. Would love to hear from you. Any feedback you have, any comments and until next time. It was great to chat with you, jason no-transcript.