Business leaders today are facing a challenging question on "how to lead effectively in today's VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) World?" Abidi and Joshi's latest book, The VUCA Learner provides a radar with insights on VUCA. The authors state that the business leaders must transit from the "I am the Boss" syndrome to being a facilitator. The book has been divided into 11 chapters, with a foreword from Dr Marshall Goldsmith, who says that knowledge workers are going to challenge the economy and bring in order from chaos.

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The first chapter introduces to the business landscape that is changing rapidly. This change is evident often due to several inter related factors such as globalisation, disruptive technologies and business models, innovation, flatter & leaner organisations, mergers & acquisitions, restructuring, spin-offs, marketplace disruptions etc. The certainties and unknowns are more with no patterns that can be measured. Look at Tesla, bringing in electric vehicle's disrupting the established automobile industry. Artificial intelligence will yet another big disruptor, almost affecting the entire industry.

Being an unexpected learner has been discussed in chapter 2, wherein there is an emphasis on learning agility. The authors candidly describe it as the ability and willingness to learn from every opportunity and subsequently apply to perform successfully under different conditions. To my mind, this unexpected learner must be stretched to a continuous learner and specially under controlled chaos conditions. The future of work is also going to change as the chapter 3 illustrates with the changing landscapes of organisation. The half-life of a professional skill is down to five years and is shrinking fast. It makes no sense to train people on skills that will become obsolete in short order, possibly by the time the learner is out of the skills training school. The questions to ask are:

Whom to train? (Identification and volume!)

Why to train? (Reasons? Will it accomplish the purpose?)

When to train? (The perfect timing!)

How to train? (Methodology deployed)

Thus, who will win, as the authors state in chapter 4? Do you know what is the reality in this turbulent world? We are living in times where excessive disruption at the workplace will reduce, at times. our ability to see the future? Are we thinking? The safe job you were banking upon has disappeared. There is a complete change in workplace dynamics. Thus, becoming your own teacher, is considered now to be a safe bet as described in chapter 5. Today’s learners and workplace learning environment are vastly different than they were even ten years back. Learning is a change in behaviour while in training, we seek a change in knowledge or skill in an individual. Adults learn differently from children. Unlike children, they accumulate experience throughout their life. Their learning is both influenced by and also influences it. Do we have self-motivated intrinsically driven learners?

In an environment with wide opportunities, world will become the class room. Chapter 6 illustrates that we live in the golden age of self-learning, surrounded by innumerable tools, starting with the internet. Who would have ever thought of the latent and explicit power of the internet and how it has transformed our learning around us. The advantage is that many of these resources are free or very affordable. Have you tried any of these? Therefore, in a networked society, together we learn and together we change, is what the authors emphasise upon in chapter 7. Earlier, knowledge was shared freely and activities like story-telling and dancing appeared to transfer knowledge to newer generations. Now learning took the shape of apprenticeship where one master craftsman took in several novices who learnt the craft from the teacher over several years.

Family firms must also learn in the VUCA world as said in chapter 8. It is generally assumed that in a fast moving VUCA environment, family businesses would have difficulty in sustaining their survival and growth, but we believe that wanting the business to succeed in the long run makes it easier for family enterprises to leave aside strategy, which offers short-term gains. Hierarchy or Wirearchy are two important connects one learner cannot ignore. The chapter 9, throws light on that with rapid changes evidenced and anticipated followed by increased competition, the source of economic wealth will be less in the production of material goods yet will increase towards creation and manipulation of information, knowledge and ideas. This will be the new world of connect by wire. Road less travelled is yet another area of discussions as entrepreneurs, who would take an important role for job creation. The chapter 10 expects an individual to fuel the business acumen thus be driven by an innate desire, intrinsic motivation, passion, and a fair risk-taking ability in establishing an enterprise.

Thus, as the book concludes in chapter 11, every day, we see a new job description, a new career emerging. Learning Engineer, Chief Data Officer (CDO), Chief Listening Officer (CLO) and so on. An individual joining today can expect to change jobs six to seven times over the course of working life, and four of these jobs don’t exist yet. Future readiness is the capacity to anticipate trends in emerging technology and in the wider business environment, including social trends, which impact your company and the industry. Future does not come suddenly. Weak signals herald its arrival. But in general, it is observed that most of us are complacent and star performers in our own comfort zones! Are we reading these signals?

To respond with this new set of desired abilities, the VUCA Learner must prepare and develop her/himself for being a continuous learner, exhibiting "learning agility", characterised by competencies like mental agility, people agility, change agility. This is what the crux is to be a VUCA Leader. Are our businesses hedged against VUCA? Certainly not, hence, if you do not intend to succumb as the VUCA company, emerge as a VUCA learner.

Dr Aseem Chauhan is chancellor of Amity University.

First Published:Jan 3, 2019 6:26 PM IST