Institute For The Future

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
- Abraham Lincoln, 1862 Annual Message to Congress

 

This chapter explores nasty challenges and intriguing opportunities of the VUCA world. The dangers are characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. But these same dangers create leadership opportunities that I describe in terms of vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.

 

Many people, including some leaders, are already beyond their own personal capability to cope. The pain can be intense. While nobody can predict the future, you can prepare. You can't escape all pain, but you can prepare your mind to engage with painful dilemmas. With a prepared mind, the chances of success are much higher, and the pain is more manageable, at least partly because you are expecting it. As Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.'

 

The forecast you read in Chapter 2 is the darkest Ten-Year Forecast we've ever done at Institute for the Future in almost forty years of forecasting, but it is not without hope. Indeed, frightening forecasts can be motivating; they inspire new action so the dark forecast never happens.

 

The great storyteller J. R .R. Tolkien made this observation about dark stories: 'Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to lis- ten to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a good deal of telling anyway.'2 The same could be said about forecasting: uncomfortable forecasts are more engaging and perhaps more useful because they are more likely to inspire action.

 

The VUCA world is all about change, including both dangerous ruptures and positive innovation. Inspiring strategies are hidden in the volatilities, uncertainties, complexities, and ambiguities that are highlighted on our Forecast Map inside the book jacket. Although the dangers are more apparent, there are many opportunities as well - even if they are below the surface. Leaders need to flip the VUCA forces, to comprehend the dangers but figure out a way to get there early and win anyway.

 

The Roots of VUCA

 

My own introduction to the term VUCA began the week before September 11, 2001, when I was part of a Deloitte senior leadership retreat at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The Army War College is where rising-star military leaders learn how to be generals, where successful tactical leaders learn to be strategic. The students learn how complex government systems work, but they also grow what the army hopes will become personal social networks for the future - particularly connections with the growing number of students from other branches of the U.S. military and the militaries of other countries. The Army War College is a graduate school for life-and-death dilemmas. 'VUCA University' focuses on leadership and strategy.

 

When I first arrived on the Army War College campus just days before 9/11, it felt like a sleepy liberal arts college that just happened to be focused on military matters. The campus is in a lovely historic setting.

 

In the quiet dusk, I walked the cinder track where Olympic superstar Jim Thorpe had run, circling the field where Pop Warner coached during the time when the campus was home to an American Indian school. To the side of the grassy campus square, I found a small plaque commemorating the place where Confederate general and Army War Col- lege graduate Jeb Stuart burned down most of the Carlisle barracks on his roundabout way to Gettysburg. I saw an old tree that was said to be alive in the days of George Washington, when the campus was used for troop training. All was quiet and calm on the pastoral Army War College campus, without any apparent sense of danger. Security was light.

 

Now, in the post-9/11 world, the Carlisle campus feels like an armed camp, with security everywhere. The Army War College is focused on the military and societal leadership dilemmas of the VUCA world.

 

I have been back to Carlisle frequently since 9/11 to lead and participate in seminars with business, nonprofit, and military leaders. Columbia Business School now works with the Army War College to organize these exchanges with a wide range of leaders from business, nonprofits, government, and the military. We focus on lessons for leadership and strategy and what we can learn from one another. The simple answer is, we can learn a lot.

 

I had very little experience with the military before I began these exchanges, and I had a rather negative view of it: I thought of it as hierarchical and out of touch. Now, having done many of these exchanges, I have come away with great respect for our military - especially for how they are learning how to learn. The army's transformation began after Vietnam, which many think of as a failure in learning.

 

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible today to separate any discussion of the military from a discussion of the pros and cons of our government's military policy, but that is what I am going to try to do.

 

I'm not here to critique U.S. military policy. Rather, I want to draw lessons about learning that all of us might take away from the intense lifethreatening realities of warfare today.

 

The story that follows introduces the challenges of living, learning, and teaching in the frightening world in which soldiers live. Think of this as a very human story about on-the-spot learning in a life-and-death situation, where no amount of conventional training would have been enough to anticipate what happened.

 

One afternoon in July 2003, a young army battalion commander from Iowa led a small group of soldiers into the center of a town in northern Iraq. The situation in that part of the country was unpredictable. Roadside bombs, kidnappings, rocket-propelled grenade attacks, and assassinations were commonplace. Antagonism toward the Americans was a certainty. Whether antagonism would lead to violence was less certain but was always possible.

 

The commander's orders were to begin a relationship with local religious leaders. His mission was peaceful, but his men were understandably nervous.

 

It was hot as the soldiers marched along a main road, and sweat dripped into their eyes. Small groups of Iraqi men watched them pass, showing neither pleasure nor anger. But as the platoon penetrated farther into the center of town, the groups grew larger.

 

The expressions of the men, at first neutral, grew increasingly hostile. Someone shook his fist. The growing crowd threatened at any moment to become a mob.

 

A heated discussion began among the Iraqi men, and attention focused on the Americans. The commander raised his arm, and the platoon stopped. Traffic seemed to have vanished from the streets, and a sullen silence fell. By now there were several hundred men advancing toward the platoon. Some were collecting rocks and paving stones, and the mood was clearly threatening.

 

The young commander looked back and saw more people gathering behind his platoon. He had to make a decision. Standard procedure would be either to retreat with as much dignity as possible or to fire warning shots. Neither option seemed appropriate; the platoon was now surrounded and vastly outnumbered. To threaten violence would work against the commander's intent to make friends with the religious leaders.

 

He might have thought he had a problem, for which there was some kind of solution. But in fact he had a dilemma with several apparent options, all bad, all leading at best to failure of the mission and at worst to violence.

 

Instead of reacting by rote (there was actually little to which he could have referred), he took a moment to focus on the desired outcome. His mission was not to fight, to suppress an insurgency, or to attack a stronghold. His mission (his superior's intent) was peaceful, to make contact with local religious leaders and begin an ongoing exchange. Bullets would result in civilian deaths, a public relations disaster, and failure of his mission. Retreat would be a failure even if it were possible, and even no response could result in casualties and possibly death for himself and his men. How could he deal with this dilemma? In that moment, he improvised an alternate approach, part strategy and part tactic, neither surrender nor aggression. He ordered his men to smile, raise their weapons in the air and turn their barrels down, and to kneel on the ground. They were not showing subservience. After all, they had not laid down their weapons and lowered their heads. They could still respond militarily on short notice if necessary. But they communicated across languages and customs in a clearly understandable way that they meant no harm, that their mission was peaceful.

 

The crowd stopped in surprise. It seemed to have been spoiling for a fight, hoping perhaps for the bullets if not surrender. Instead they got neither hostility (and a kind of justification for their rage) nor retreat (and so victory). The commander's response defused a potentially dangerous situation, avoided violence, and allowed for the successful completion of his mission on a return visit.

 

Although the young officer faced a tactical challenge, this story introduces a strategic learning situation. How can organizations teach leaders to deal with dilemmas that cannot be anticipated? The leader in this story was ready in this life-threatening moment, and he reacted instinctively.

 

How can leaders learn to sense what's going on and come up with a successful response?