Ever heard of VUCA—as in: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity? Ever thought that these aspects could actually be beneficial on a certain level? Let’s find out.

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Before We Start: What’s VUCA? ¶

VUCA is an acronym coined to describe the world from the perspective of the U.S. Army after the Cold War. It stands for: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity.

Nowadays, it’s also used to describe the general conditions of the Digital Transformation—and the fact that previous methods and instruments are ill-fitting to the new challenges.

The way to cope with the challenges arising from VUCA, the “antidote”, has also been termed VUCA—this time standing for: Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility.

Here’s a more detailed article about the two VUCAs:

A Common Misconception About VUCA ¶

At first, it looks like a simple message:

VUCA is bad for you. You should replace it with VUCA.

Most people talking about VUCA

This assumes that all volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity is useless at best—if not straight out harmful. At first sight, this seems logical. Nobody associates these words right away with something positive.

At second thought yet: Isn’t there some value to things that have these qualities? Let’s flip it around and ask: Wouldn’t there be missing something important in our lives if everything was always stable, certain, straight forward, and clear? Aren’t these aspects that make life interesting and exciting, too? Aren’t these properties that allow change and innovation for the better?

So, it’s rather about the right mix: There are situations when VUCA hurts—and others when it helps. But when’s what?

Distinguishing the Two VUCAs ¶

Before we look at how to combine the two, let’s first tell them better apart:

• Outer VUCA is what life throws at you: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
• Inner VUCA is what you can throw at life: Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility

It still puzzles me how the inventors of the Inner VUCA (proponents of the C as in Clarity) couldn’t come up with more … wait for it … clarity in the acronyms. 🙄

Combining Inner and Outer VUCAs … ¶

… With the Help of S2S ¶

Say hello to an old friend: Stairs to Success (S2S). It’s a simple method that’s specifically designed to answer the “When’s what?” question.

It helps to be more successful when collaborating with others. According to S2S, we should pay attention to the following order and …

1. Focus on relationships by answering first the question of who and why.
2. Switch to the process level in a second step to answer the question of how.
3. Work on the subject matter after taking care of the first two levels. Here’s where you work on the what.
4. After your work, return to the process level in a fourth step.
5. Finally, land on the relationship level again. Invest a bit of time to foster relationships for the next time you’ll be working together.

The illustration of the steps looks like this:

You can read more about it here:

Let’s pinpoint each VUCA on the Stairs ¶

Given the three levels of the stairs—where and when’s one VUCA more appropriate than the other?

A quick declination shows:

	On Relationship Level	On Process Level	On Subject Level
Outer VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)	Definitively Toxic	Definitively Toxic	Potentially Beneficial
Inner VUCA (Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility)	Definitively Beneficial	Definitively Beneficial	N/A

If you ask me, I’ll summarize it this way: If the Inner VUCA is strong on the relationship and process levels, you can deal with the Outer VUCA on the subject level just fine—or even benefit from these conditions.

Let’s illustrate with some examples:

Conclusion ¶

In this article, I showed how both Inner and Outer VUCAs are multifaceted:

• Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity can be beneficial on the subject level. So don’t eliminate it there!
• Vision and Understanding help especially when building relationships. Clarity and Agility work well especially on the process level. So, focus your leadership work on these two levels!

The mapping to the different levels of S2S helped me grasp even more the importance of the relationship and process levels.