Being a Successful Leader in

Being a Successful Leader in Today’s VUCA WORLD

BY MARTIN EMRICH

Our world has become increasingly complex in the past couple of months. The main drivers behind this development are unstoppable globalization and tremendous digitalization.

These forces have led to a business environment that many leaders now describe with the acronym “VUCA.” The outbreak of the coronavirus in March 2020 has shown how quickly local problems can become global catastrophes. And it has turned the entire planet into a world that is more dramatically VUCA than it has ever been before. The purpose of this article is to revisit the meaning of “VUCA” and present a new skillset for leaders in this contemporary business world. The four key skills relevant in today’s VUCA world can best be summarized with the acronym “NOPA,” which I will outline later in the article.

S o what is meant by the “VUCA world” that everyone is talking about? Volatility. One example of volatility is the stock market. Sometimes it goes up then rapidly down again, like a rollercoaster ride. “Volatility” refers to a very rapid, erratic change. These changes, such as those experienced by a market or a single company, are very difficult to predict. You don’t know when, how seriously, or in which direction a change will happen. Often, goals change in the middle of a project. This is also referred to as “moving targets.” These make classical project management either very difficult or even completely pointless. Uncertainty. This volatility often causes an enormous uncertainty, both intellectually and emotionally. A meticulous search for information usually doesn’t provide the desired remedy here. Even after talking to the most prestigious

p rofessors and other experts, we cannot predict with certainty the effect of a tweet by Donald Trump or the impact of the outbreak of the coronavirus on the global economy. And, ironically, both too little and too much information can evoke uncertainty. Complexity. The multiple interactions between some known, and partly unknown, parameters make many topics and issues of our time enormously complex. A flood of new scientific findings and ever-more differentiated legal regulations increases the degree of complexity. But our brain is not perfectly constructed for that. It constantly tries to reduce complexity. This trick in our thinking partly explains the success of politicians who offer simple, black-and-white solutions, such as “Only diesel vehicles cause particulate pollution of the air!” Yes, oversimplifications seem to be experiencing a veritable boom in politics—precisely because of the de facto complexity of the world, which is driving many citizens mad. In addition, many voters wish to be presented with a simple scapegoat for complex issues. Albert Einstein, on the contrary, said, “Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler!” Ambiguity. Ambiguity means vagueness. The first three letters “VUC” result in a situation that the individual often doesn’t even know how to interpret, and that is where “ambiguity” comes in. We can look at almost every event as an equation, where (E) allows for multiple possible interpretations (I1, I2, I3...). For example, “E” can be “My boss

doesn’t respond to my email. It may mean that he doesn’t like me (I1), fully trusts me (I2), couldn’t receive my email (I3), or simply forgot to reply (I4).” Or it could be something completely different. How quickly and how realistically we interpret events has a big impact on our success. Also, knowing whether it is habitually OK for us to not have a simple explanation for everything immediately (high ambiguity tolerance) or whether this state causes us stress (low ambiguity tolerance) is quite essential. The ability to withstand the tension of ambiguity is increasingly used as a selection criterion, especially when selecting managers. Now let’s address what additional skills a business leader needs to adequately confront this VUCA world.

COUNTERING VUCA WITH NOPA

“When the wind of change is blowing, some build walls, others windmills.” According to this saying from China, it’s not about stopping the VUCA trends or even bricking them in. Rather, it is helpful to “resonate” with the new dynamics of the VUCA world. Here are four ways you can resonate, summarized in a strategy that I developed in 2018 as “NOPA”: Networking, Openness, Participation, and Agility. Networking. As everyone should know, your network is your net worth!

“A modern leader should always try to care for employees and systematically develop them. The most effective way to do this is by sharing your power.”

Due to the explosive growth in knowledge, a single human being is hardly able to familiarize himself with everything and individually penetrate the complexity of facts. One remedy can be a well-functioning network. If I have only a limited knowledge of my own but know which people in my social environment can give me more knowledge, that is very helpful. It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know! Self-employed people, generally speaking, are optimally networked via virtual social networks. Companies are also trying to push the internal networking of their employees to counteract departmental egoism. The German company Bosch, for example, has launched its own “internal Facebook” called “Bosch Connect,” which is enjoying growing popularity among employees. The company has also organized a so-called “lunch roulette.” Every employee who wants to participate puts her or his name in a raffle and is randomly assigned a “lunch date” from another department and a different hierarchical level. This lunch date happens only once and lasts only 30 minutes, but the program has been shown to drastically improve interdepartmental communication and to decisively strengthen informal networks. A modern company leader is already aware of the importance of informal networks. These networks probably helped the leader get to his or her current leadership position. How can the power of networks be employed at your company? First, both direct reports and colleagues should be granted access to already existing informal networks by company leaders. In this way, the growth and career advancement of everyone working for and with the company leaders can be accelerated. Second, company leaders should be good observers of the organizational system and initiate and consolidate new formal and informal networks where they make sense. Openness. Your mind is like a parachute. It only works if it is open. O penness has a lot to do with allowing criticism and listening. It also means embracing mistakes as a source for learning. The opposite is the “zero tolerance for mistakes” company culture. This kind of culture suffocates and paralyzes. Openness, on the other hand, allows miniexperiments, new things, and mistakes. In terms of “error culture,” more pioneer work is still needed in numerous organizations. Many executives still view mistakes as flaws and failures. A first step could be that managers are very transparent about mistakes that they have already made themselves. This will encourage employees to talk openly about their own mistakes instead of sweeping them under the carpet. A modern business leader should be a role model in terms of openness. One of the most effective measures is to talk openly about your own mistakes—especially your more severe business mistakes where there was no happy ending. At the same time, feedback from everyone in the organization should not only be openly accepted but even highly appreciated. This openness creates an organizational climate where subordinates are likely to share their own mistakes and are more willing to accept feedback about their own blind spots. Participation. Caring is sharing!

Participation means systematically involving employees in important decisions. We also speak of “empowerment,” or the authorization or granting of power. The authoritarian model of leadership bundles the power of the CEO and turns the employees into mere recipients of orders. As a result, the organization is only as intelligent as the boss, who makes all the decisions “from above,” alone. In learning organizations, however, the organizational chart is (mentally) turned on its head. This puts the employees right at the top. You get more power and a certain freedom of choice. This makes use of the intelligence and knowledge of all employees. As a result, the system is more flexible and faster, and the employees are more motivated and more responsible due to the extended authority. A modern leader should always try to care for employees and systematically develop them. The most effective way to do this is by sharing your power. A good approach is to start by delegating simpler tasks. Then, when things go well, allow your employees to participate more and more, even in complex business decisions. Agility. Act, reflect, adjust, repeat. Agility means the cyclic back-and-forth between planning and implementation—that is, between “reflect” and “act.” Each mini-test is reflected. Each intermediate result is analyzed, and on this basis the next test balloon or the next step is developed. The agile procedure in iterative loops explicitly includes the possibility that a decision made is revised and a path taken is completely abandoned or at least corrected. This permanent readjustment promotes

adaptability, self-responsibility, and reaction speed of all employees and thus of the entire company. Through high agility, organizations can adapt to changing circumstances and volatile customer needs more quickly, giving them a massive competitive advantage over their competitors. Being a leader in the VUCA world means having to realize that rigid long-term planning does not always make sense. For many projects as well as departments, an agile approach is more effective: Following the agile mindset, more space should be created for courageously testing new ideas. And more emphasize should be put on “learning while doing.” In a nutshell, our world has become more VUCA than it was before. To gain a competitive advantage in this unpredictable, quickly changing business environment, business leaders should commit themselves to work on their NOPA competencies. They should create the right networks and use their power. They should create an organizational climate of openness rather than punishing mistakes. They should gradually allow employees to take more and more responsibility and thus allow them to participate. And they should apply an agile approach, wherever it makes sense. AQ

Martin Emrich, PhD, has worked for both AMA and Management Centre Europe for more than 12 years on three continents and in five different languages (English, Italian, Spanish, French and German). In 2018, he published a bestseller book about the NOPA strategy. For the first public presentation of the NOPA strategy in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2019, he won the African Speaker Award. He is based in Germany and works worldwide as a keynote speaker, author, and executive coach. His works mainly pivot around leadership-related topics.

Deriving Long-Term Strategic Advantage from MANDATED TELECOMMUTING

BY ANDREA “ANDI” SUMMERS AND T.J. TOPERCER

The most successful leaders will prove able to fully embrace the new normal, reorient management practices, and drive efficiency through more purposeful meetings. 14 I MCE QUARTERLY I SUMMER 2020

As CEO of a mid-size, private equity-backed company, Steven is anxious about the future of his business. Since stepping into the role five years ago, he has watched the company grow from a few dozen people to more than 200, taking enormous pride in its success. Now, the swift onset of a global economic contraction is forcing him to revisit the organization’s priorities and strategy. While he orchestrates an enterprise-wide pivot, he’s optimistic about his ability to succeed. Still, he worries whether the changes he’s implementing will be enough to keep his business viable and his people employed, especially in a vastly different and uncertain climate. Steven’s fears are common in today’s unprecedented times. Rapid changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic gave leaders little time to make strategic decisions in preparation for the anticipated recession, while forced telecommuting added significant challenges and pressures. Executives were forced to reboot established policies and practices even as they fought to keep businesses afloat. Fortunately for Steven and others, there are opportunities for companies to emerge from this crisis stronger and more agile, especially among those that can quickly adapt to the realities of remote work. The most successful leaders in this new era will prove able to fully embrace the new normal, strategically reorient their management practices, and drive efficiency through more purposeful meetings, while ensuring that any fears about the future of work don’t hinder potential and progress.

EMBRACE THE NEW NORMAL

Even as leaders anticipate the business environment “returning to normal,” they need to accept that the new world will likely look very different from the one before. Significantly, remote work will be much more accepted, even preferred, as organizations and leaders begin to acclimate. Many will jump at the chance to lower office-related overhead expenses, expand talent pools beyond limited geographic areas, and offer employees a highly coveted, zero-cost perk. Adjusting to this new reality is less about making telecommuting work during self-quarantine, and more about determining how it will best function even after the pandemic is behind us. This will require that leaders understand the development of telecommuting-focused policies and practices as more than just temporary measures. Such thinking will help them adapt in ways beyond learning how to conduct videoconferences, as just one example. They’ll benefit from considering the much larger picture, including how to engage employees, ensure productivity, build and sustain culture, and maintain focus, all while people continue to work from home.

REORIENT MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

The abrupt end of a management era that relied heavily on face-to-face meetings, office “pop ins” and conference room brainstorms will undoubtedly pose a challenge for many leaders. That said, various organizations and industries have already pioneered remote work models, formalizing best practices for those new to large-scale telecommuting. These include:

Ensure accountability. With teams working from home, leaders will need to create and utilize new avenues to determine how initiatives are advancing and whether their people are in sync, need support, envision future challenges, and so forth. One way to manage this is for leaders to conduct regular, one-on-one calls with those they supervise to ensure they have a direct window into their work and understand how various potentially hidden challenges—professional and personal—might be impacting their ability to concentrate.

Focus on information sharing. Companies that used to rely on impromptu physical encounters to get their people up to speed on priorities, challenges, changes, and the like now need to bridge physical distances. They can accomplish this via the strategic use of internal communications, focusing on more than just tactical matters; they should also account for enterprise-wide outlook, strategy, mission, and vision. While pushing information out is vital, ensuring a two-way exchange is equally essential to position leadership to pivot as priorities change and empower employees to help solve problems. When in doubt, companies should seek to overcommunicate versus risking that information gets lost.

Assess and streamline technology. The world shifted to telecommuting so rapidly that companies had no time to determine which programs best suited their needs. Moving forward, leaders need to formally review available tools for videoconferencing, digital project management, and collaboration, and direct their people to the ones they’ve deemed best. It’s crucial they clarify chosen platforms, explaining the rationale and instructing employees how they can best use them (providing tutorials as needed). Otherwise, individuals will be resistant to change. They’ll also need to commit to using such platforms themselves, modeling the behavior they hope to instill in others.

Sustain culture. A dispersed workforce requires organizations to rethink how to build and sustain culture, as they’ll no longer have the ability to display mission and values in highly trafficked spaces, to name a common practice. Instead they’ll need to take a much more orchestrated, deliberate approach. For example, leaders can weave their values into regular communications and celebrate them through formal recognition and occasional shout-outs. They can also deepen bonds and bolster trust by encouraging personal connections between team members, modeling constructive methods for addressing conflict, and creating forums for two-way, transparent feedback. Crucially, they should seek to re-ground everyone in the mission and vision of the organization, explicitly reinforcing how these two elements drive enterprise-wide decision making and strategy.

“Mandating that meetings have explicit purposes will help leaders better determine who needs to attend to achieve set goals.”

DRIVE PURPOSEFUL MEETINGS

Among leaders able to embrace change and find silver linings, the sudden transition to large-scale telecommuting unearths several potential efficiencies. Beyond saving on brick-and-mortar, today’s evolution creates avenues for significant productivity enhancements by prompting leaders to rethink how they organize meetings. Across companies and industries, many leaders have acknowledged, though usually privately, that a widespread overreliance on meetings has taxed employees and limited productivity. As companies adapt to remote work, they have an opportunity to rethink when meetings are truly necessary and who needs to participate, potentially freeing many individuals to focus on their specific deliverables. The best way for leaders to scrutinize their use of meetings is to set a standard in which every scheduled meeting has a specific purpose. These might include making strategic decisions or generating ideas. Meetings that simply allow for participants to share updates might not be necessary at all, since such information can often be relayed easily via email. Mandating that meetings have explicit purposes will help leaders better determine who needs to attend, as inviting the wrong mix of people can make it difficult to achieve set goals. This process will inevitably lead to smaller, more focused meetings, provided companies have done the work of clarifying roles so that potential participants fully understand what they bring to each discussion.

CONFRONT FEARS

Many leaders adapting to remote work will benefit from looking inward to confront nagging fears about the accelerated timing of today’s new normal. From loss of connection to loss of control, the long-term dispersion of teams will present challenges for many executives who might have resisted telecommuting in years past—primarily, though perhaps unknowingly, because of fear. Understanding that left unchecked, fears can severely limit an individual’s capabilities and an organization’s trajectory, it’s wise for leaders to be mindful of them, acknowledging their presence and triggers, as much as possible. Executive coaching can play an important role in helping leaders recognize and work through long-held fears for the strategic benefit of the companies they serve. One fear that is particularly likely to arise from COVIDrelated workplace changes relates directly to worth and purpose. Specifically, as teams begin experiencing success in seamlessly advancing key initiatives, even w hile afar, some leaders—accustomed to being physically present for such victories—will suffer from feelings of being adrift. Many will even experience anxiety that the f uture of work has shown their bench of talent to be so strong that their presence, virtual or otherwise, is no longer needed. L eaders able to recognize and confront this particular fear have an enormous opportunity. They can better empower and elevate their people, seeing how they perform when no one is looking over their shoulder—a process that will reveal a new wave of superstars. Further, they can begin focusing themselves on the much bigger picture, thinking strategically instead of tactically, freeing up their time and brainpower to best ensure their organization’s long-term success. AQ

Andrea “Andi” Summers and T.J. Topercer are consultants at human capital advisory firm FMG Leading. Summers has introduced systems, processes, and best practices to formalize ongoing work for teams of varying sizes and responsibilities, most notably leading Learning & Development for a globally dispersed organization of more than 9,000 employees. Topercer is an outcomes-focused leader with a strong background in team performance and strategic planning and execution. He brings experience from both Big Four consulting and military leadership. He led teams in high-stress environments for seven years as a Surface Warfare Officer in the U.S. Navy where he was deployed to both the South Pacific and South America.

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