Work Feeling FUBAR? There's a Word for That
It's time for a new battle acronym for those serving corporations. Welcome, VUCA.
I am writing the lede to this on the Metro North, which is not the way I wanted to start a post on how distraction is becoming the norm at a time when our problems are becoming more complex and deserving of our undivided attention to solve them. But it’s hard to find the time at home with two toddlers and an ever-expanding list of home improvement projects and work is, well, work.
I used to fall into the trap of “I just need to make it through this week/month/quarter/project” and things will calm down again. I am here to tell you, dear reader, that is not how the new world works. This ain’t our daddy’s job - a single income supporting the family back home in a middle-income neighborhood in an affordable house. This is 21st century capitalism, so buckle up fucklehead and try not to die.
What the VUCA
There’s a new battle acronym in town to replace my favorite FUBAR. Corporate jockeys like myself love war acronyms (you’re welcome for my service.)
So what is VUCA? It stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity and it happens to be where the human species finds itself today. Every year brings new complexities to work and life, and we have to continue to navigate a world that, while it may also be FUBAR at times, is filled with VUCA.
We are expected to move businesses forward in a world where, at the drop of a hat, we might need to take a multinational out of a massive European market led by an ex-KGB nutjob, or decide how much to invest in driverless cars that - whoops - can’t really drive themselves, or decide if we continue spending money on a platform led by a rabid antisemite who wants us to go fuck ourselves (this one seems easy, but you’d be surprised with some advertisers.)
We all know shit happens. But it certainly feels like shit is happening at increased frequency and volume than it has in the past. That’s VUCA.
Heads Down Work
The examples above are macro - huge, headline-grabbing issues that seemingly only affect companies doing business in Russia, or creating driverless technology, or advertising on Twitter. But they’re distracting, and they exist on top of the micro-distractions that we deal with every day at our jobs.
When our parents left work, they left work. If your parents did not do shift work, your lawyer mom might have brought a brief home with her now and then, or your teacher dad might have graded work at home, but in reality they had the choice to turn off if they wanted to. They didn’t have Blackberries and iPhones pinging them at all hours of the night with emails and instant messages. If there was an emergency someone called the house phone - not something you did after a decent hour and not a technique you pushed for a quick “pls fix, thx.”
Today there is no escaping work, even if you want to. We are chained to email at all hours, someone halfway across the world can instant message or video call me at 3am my time if they need something (can you imagine Shanghai calling your parent’s house phone in the middle of the night for clarity on a project scope? Outside of the absurdity of the action in and of itself, the cost would be astronomical - even if you switched your long distance to MCI.)
We Are Not Built for This
Humans simply aren’t built for this always-on lifestyle. You might hear a lot about “hustle culture” and “grind culture” but the reality is that those folks are selling an unattainable lifestyle that very quickly leads to burnout. Plus, you need to sleep.
You know what is built for a constant onslaught of information and simply too much data for one mind to comprehend? AI, but that’s a post for another week.
Get the VUCA Out of Here
The US War College defined VUCA in the absolute chaos in the world following the dissolution of the USSR in the late 1980s (as just a single example, the leader of the new Russian Federation and holder of the largest global nuclear stockpile - by a country mile - was a known drunk.) In the 2010s they set out to understand what good leaders did through situations rife with VUCA and how they led through the chaos.
A couple of techniques rose to the fore.
Don’t Look at the Data, Look at the Right Data
We tend to try to absorb as much information as possible to make a decision, but we don’t stop to ask if we’re looking at the data we should be. You don’t need as much data as you think you do, so ask your team for the right data. If you don’t trust them to get you that data, re-evaluate your expectations or re-evaluate your team. The environment in which we operate is too volatile to wait for all of the data to come in.
Get Comfortable With Unprecedented Times
It feels like a lot of the new problems we deal with come with the adjective “unprecedented” attached to it. We don’t like that as humans, and our new decision-maker helper we’ve dubbed Artificial Intelligence doesn’t like that either - we use past behavior to derive future outcomes.
In the wildly uncertain world we live in, that doesn’t quite work anymore. Deadlines are shorter and clarity is lacking - low-data decision-making is AI’s weak point, but it can be a strength for those humans who work on it. It will be a necessary skill for leaders, especially as AI continues to take up space at work.
Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good (Enough)
Some problems need to be brought to 100% resolution, but as problems become more and more complex, time becomes a luxury at work that quickly becomes unaffordable for every single project. You need to know how to get to the solution that moves the ball down the field, but maybe doesn’t quite get you into the end zone - and more importantly, when that’s okay or when you need to throw more resources at something. Do not forget about the iron triangle.
Drive Your Team to Their Goals via a Defined Vision
Many job descriptions today come with a canned statement about being able to work - thrive, even - in an ambiguous environment. While true, this is wildly unfair, as it is a leader’s job to create clarity out of ambiguity for their team to have a clear (or at least defined) path to tread.
It’s your job as a leader to define that vision, communicate it clearly, and reinforce it. And make sure it’s a vision, not simply a goal or a mission - two aspects of a team that, while crucial, are more fungible and susceptible to ambiguity than a quality vision.
Grab Bag Sections
WTF Flying: I had the chance to go out to Silicon Valley for work last week, which meant two transcon flights on a domestic airline in short order. Humans have the uncanny ability to match a jaw-dropping technology (hurtling an aluminum tube 30,000 feet in the air at hundred of miles an hour) and pair it with an utterly miserable experience (almost everything about flying below business class.)
Before you even get the plane you’re subject to a highly invasive, and highly dubious, security procedure. Then you are broken into castes based on your flight purchase price, which decides how you board the plane. You wouldn’t think that’s important, but with airlines charging a fee to check a bag (a previously free privilege), the crush to get on the plane is crucial if you want to squeeze your bag into overhead bins not really made for them. On top all of this, the seats get smaller every year, the food (which you now have to pay for) sucks, and the little “amenities” meant to make the flight bearable (WiFi, in-flight entertainment) are getting spotty at best. I made the mistake of relying on WiFi being available on my flight out west (because it is heavily marketed for this airline) and - surprise! - it did not work the entire 6.5 hour flight.
Album of the Week: It’s Mr. Baklava. It’s Bronsoliño. It’s Bam Bam. That’s right: one of the weirdest rappers out gets album of the week.
Coming off of his popular Blue Chips mixtapes (peak Bronson, IMHO), Action Bronson released his first studio album on a major label. While Bronson’s lyrics are his main draw, the flow is good enough to allow stanzas like “Uh, I feel so alive, I think I shit myself / I should kiss myself / I'm starin' at the man inside the mirror / The reflection shows a wolf though / Goddamn, I'm still cute, ho.” And yes, Bronson toned it down because it’s a studio album, not a mixtape.
Make sure to listen to “Brand New Car,” “Actin’ Crazy,” “Baby Blue,” and the tour de force outro that is “Easy Rider.”
Quote of the Week: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is that ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
See you next week!