The Meaning to be Made in a VUCAlicious World

Found this primer to the challenges facing the Next Generation Leaders on Jessica Margolin’s site. Called, Next Generation Leadership it is a short PDF on leading in the VUCA world.

VUCA stands for: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous-the four horsemen of chaos and complexity.

Margolin goes on to astutely assert that success will favor those who thrive in VUCA environments. Couldn’t agree more.

When we talk about capacity evolution, we have just an environment in mind. Our work in Japan has brought us client after client who are caught flat-footed as they rather suddenly have to try and navigate a world of little certainty, rapid & unpredictable change, and situations with no and many “right” answers that are often questions themselves.

In a VUCA world, leaders need the capacity to perceive, act and make meaning in non-linear, trans-rational ways. Some come to it naturally, some will be called, many will have to be shown the way.

Where do you fit in?

Tags: ambiguity, capacity evolution, complexity, leadership, uncertainty, volatility

On the Subject of Gas Prices…

Another C+C News Update. Found this while browsing links from the Wall Street Journal article referenced in Shifting the Focus Away from Oil. Called AP IMPACT: What makes up the price of gas?, it starts off as a fairly linear description of the crude oil refining process and its impact on prices. However it quickly digresses into a number of vignettes on the other elements of price people are paying at the pump. One interesting story sheds some light on the non-rational, non-linear elements at play:

Kelly Bosley, who manages Rutter’s, doesn’t even have to look across the highway to know when Sheetz changes its price for a gallon of gas. When Sheetz raises prices, her own pumps are busy. When Sheetz lowers prices, she has not a car in sight.

She calls Rutter’s headquarters to report the competition’s new price and wait for instructions.

“I call a lot of times and say, ‘They went down, hurry up! Hurry up! Call me! Call me!’ Or it could be where theirs goes up, and I’ll say, ‘Take your time! You know, I like being busy.’ But I have no control over that.”

You think you feel helpless at the pump?

The point is its not poor Ms. Bosley who’s responsible or the greed of the oil companies or the oil producing nations. It is a constellation of interlinked, inter-related phenomena that inter-influence each other. Ms. Bosley, the oil companies, oil producing nations, increase demand for oil in China and India, car sales in those nations and others, the fluctuation of the dollar against other currencies, unemployment rates, etc. are all to “blame”. A cause becomes an effect and vice versa. Linear reasoning in this wicked mess will only up our frustration and sense of powerlessness in the world.

We need to take a few steps back and see that we are dealing with a complex system of relationships. It is the interaction of these relationships that affect the price of gas. 

Try this: put all the causes in the article in different areas on a piece of paper and start drawing lines between them as you think of connections. You have just made a crude map of the system. As you can see it is definitely not of the linear, cause and effect family of problems. The next step is studying the nature of the connections between these diverse elements. From there it is possible to design an entry point for an intervention to alter the system. More on influencing and affecting systems later.

Tags: complexity, gas prices, oil prices, systems thinking

What is your (food) stock investment strategy?

In this installment of the C+C News we look at food. This article originally published in the Wall Street Journal can also be found here. Hold onto that can of beans-it’s appreciating faster than pretty much any low risk savings options in the market. To quote:

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you’ll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%.

The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They’re all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

What’s causing this chaotic rise? Commodity prices are on the rise because staples like corn (and the arable land used for other crops) are being diverted to fuel. However, the cost of making biofuels is still high, making them expensive. Oil prices continue to skyrocket making the shipping of just about everything exorbitant. The market responds by re-orienting itself around these price spikes (and the potentially big profits to be gleaned from the turbulence). Demand continues to rise (population increases, we all gotta eat) so prices follow suit. 

Conventional linear thinking is not going to get us out of this wicked mess.

Tags: capacity evolution, complexity, food prices

Mighty Infinity

Stopped over at Seth Godin’s blog tonight and was struck by his post on infinity. He writes:

Infinite isn’t what it used to be. There used to be an infinite number of stars, and probably an infinite number of kids in high school who didn’t like you very much, but that was about it when it came to a typical human being’s interaction with the uncountable.

But now, infinite is everywhere.

It got me thinking about how “infinite” is just one of the words we use to describe that which we can’t quite hold, contain, control, manage. Infinite is God/gods, “a lot”, “no way!”, “awe”, “legion”, 八百万(yaoyorozu). It’s that which we long to simplify, find a way to engage and understand-have faith in, believe in.

In his post Seth describes “search”:

Search makes the infinite finite (at least for a while). With search, we turn the infinite selection on Amazon into a nearly manageable finite selection. Except search (no matter where you look) is pretty lame, and it doesn’t really turn infinite collections into manageable choices. 

He’s right. Search is linear-a direct connection between subject and object. Search ignores the open living system, in-your-face chaotic complexity of the infinite for the comfort of acquiring, having something-now. Search is the real opiate for the masses. Search gives you what you want and only (or nearly) what you want. My brother out in LA complains that internet searching is destroying his once (but still formidable) encyclopedic grasp of all things cinematic.

Is it possible, though, to hold the one and the many and all that connects and binds them (and us) in all of their simultaneous brilliance? That is what I’m searching for. That and Gary Snyder’s new book on Amazon.

Tags: capacity, complexity, infinite, search function