Management and Leadership in a VUCA World
Organization Development, Change Management, and Leading the organization require a good understanding of how change influences business. Economic ecosystems are increasingly seeing the symptoms and effects of a VUCA world – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. The traditional methods of goal setting, long-term visioning, and capital-intensive strategies are becoming difficult to pursue if not redundant. In the new VUCA world, the approach to organizational development, change, and leadership is going through a significant shift.
Why Organization Development, Change Management, and Leadership?
Leadership, organization development, and change management aim to proactively embrace change and leverage it for the organization’s renewal. The organization development process creates a closed-loop process of planning, executing, monitoring, evaluating, and improving the business.
A major benefit of organization development is innovation, achieved through employee development and enhancing their morale. By continuously engaging with the market, analyzing competition, and researching consumer behavior and expectations, organization development drives renewal and financial success.
In many situations, a business has a high level of complexity (for example, due to different legal and tax requirements in different countries). There may be uncertainty (for example, due to fast-paced technological advancements). There may be volatility (with unexpected changes to the market such as changing rain patterns affecting grain prices). Lastly, there may be ambiguity (with little data available on how a new technology to change the market). In these situations, organizational development and change management require leadership that adjusts to the demands of a VUCA world.
Leadership should:
- Retain a clear vision at least in the short term and provide for a greater sense of agility and responsiveness to unexpected challenges.
- Provide clear and consistent communication about the methods, result in areas, and expectations from business and people, despite shifting priorities.
- Anticipate and mitigate risk on the go without relying on old proven ways of solving problems but innovating and finding new ways of solving problems.
- Rely on data and intuition and experience of the stakeholders.
Process of Managing Change
By finding solutions to managing complexity, one can in fact leverage complexity to one’s advantage. The technology could be used to extract the talent and expertise people bring. Diversity of opinions and preferences can help organizations dilute complexity. Making bold moves and having the agility to change paths mid-way is what turns uncertainty into an advantage. Relying on extensive networks of people is what helps in dealing with both uncertainty and ambiguity. Relying on the interconnections to bring agility to a business’s response to it is also helpful.
Organization development change and leading it involves developing a workforce that can adjust to the change. Leading change requires that organizations prioritize the following:
Continuously investing in employee engagement helps because people have varying levels of comfort with change. They also respond to change differently. By actively involving the key players in the process of managing change, organizations can cope with change and also leverage it to their advantage.
Compensation and incentives need to be aligned with agility and change management. This is so that employees can comprehend what’s in it for them in managing change.
Thirdly, the management must close the feedback loop for any initiative – ensuring that communication is clear, swift, and two-way so that minor and major adjustments to the strategy and approach to the market, employees, and customers could be made appropriately.
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