Embracing digital disruption in a VUCAD world
The world is - Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous and Digital – Our Organisational leaders (and ourselves) should account for this.
The world is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. In my previous article I explored what a VUCA world is and how it can be leveraged once properly understood and embraced, to help de-risk our projects and our lives https://maxlogic.substack.com/p/how-a-vuca-framework-can-build-stability.
To summarise, for most organisations, uncertainty makes us go from a creative towards a survival based mindset. The risk associated with enacting large innovative changes means they get limited. Consequently, company growth and planning take a back seat, as we fall into this survival mode. We will tend to sit back, watch and wait for everything to return to normal, however there is no normal, just rapid change at a pace never before seen. By putting our VUCA hats on we understand and embrace this change, seeing VUCA as an opportunity, not a threat.
In an ever evolving VUCA world it makes sense that even the VUCA anagram would adapt. Have seen a few of these floating around such as D-VUCAD or Disruption, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity and Diversity. The D for Disruption encompassing the fast-moving market changes which aren’t responded to by organisations quickly enough (Borders bookstores, Blockbuster, Kodak spring to mind).
The D I wanted to look at today however stands for Digital, giving us VUCAD. In a VUCAD world we specifically recognize the importance of change caused by Digital disruption across not just industries but our long-standing institutions and how society itself interacts.
Technology provides huge opportunities to rethink how companies work and operate. The constraints that are imposed to adopting this often include organizational bias, extensive legacy systems and monolithic ERPs already in place and the associated management reasoning that comes from supporting this.
Start-ups tend not to have these constraints in place and are able to embed the correct technology at the body of what they do. By then keeping an agile mindset they can quickly pivot away from technology that isn’t adding value. Building a digital culture within the organization lets you rethink the operating model and transform the way work is done, however, it takes strong leadership and appetite for change to deliver this. Simply implementing elegant and modern user interfaces without overhauling antiquated and manual processes will not instantly digitally transform your organisation into an AI-enabled future.
Some takeaways to embrace when living in a VUCAD world:
- Location will become less relevant when it comes to who you work and interact with. Video conferencing and collaborative working tools are fairly standard in nearly all companies. Virtual work means there’s less noticeable differences working with someone down the road or from another continent. This of course can lead to a counter effect where we see backlash to such rapid change and a corresponding rise in rhetoric and policies denouncing and attempting to backtrack globalisation.
- Work load will increase as well as exposure to work (always on call), however the tools available to assist with this will improve. Can see this with the pickup in use of a range of Agile, Kanban style collaborative task based applications. The flexibility of these when it comes to tailoring workflow based on your business processes, integrating with other tools and providing transparency for what the team is working on removes a lot of traditional barriers.
- The rise of these agile work tools means siloing throughout a company is easier than ever to avoid. Different departments with different people can be set up quickly and associate in virtual teams, work and prioritisation can be seen by all. Collaboration becomes key, however to maximise this need to trust that the organisational culture in place will support this model. It pays to deal directly within the team and to each other. Need to ensure the respect and trust is in place for this to be accepted.
- Gig work will increase, people won’t need to be as tied down to one company for their entire working life. Work from home culture will continue to grow disrupting the need to physically travel and host in person meetings. The flip side of this will be that in person meetings, when held, will have more value, as they will need to have a specific reason / human connection that wouldn’t be suited to virtual.
- Simplicity and convenience will lead technology development. Customer centricity will be crucial, as well as transparency. Even aged distribution utilities now provide smart meters that link through to an app on my phone, allowing me to track immediate electricity usage and cost at any point, download said data and conduct my own analysis and trending.
- AI won’t necessarily replace humans however a person well versed in what AI tools can do certainly could. Human interaction, understanding of the team and emotional intelligence will be key as data crunching and other analysis heavy tasks will progressively be taken over by Gen AI.
If we shy away from change, we will quickly be left behind in a VUCAD world.