The Influence of Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility

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In today’s day and age the term VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, is often an all-encompassing excuse to explain away the hard work put into a particular position or course of action that goes astray. However, Johansen’s leadership opportunities of vision, understanding, clarity, and agility provide a roadmap to success by flipping the danger, like an aikido move in martial arts, absorbing the attach, and redirecting the energy of the attach in a positive direction (Johansen, 2007). Nathan Bennett, a professor at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business, and James Lemoine, a doctoral candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology, explain what VUCA means to everyday managers in their article Management: What VUCA really means to you. In turn, Cymbal Company CEO, Craigie Zildjian, provides an awesome example of someone who absorbs the difficulties of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, like a martial arts practitioner and redirects its energy in a positive direction.
The challenges of volatility as explained by Bennett & Lemoine (2014) as unexpected, unstable, and oftentimes remaining for an unknown duration of time are frightening challenges for any manager to tackle. They suggest that managers devote resources to preparedness. Volatility by definition has to do with uncertainty and instability so it is hard to be “prepared,” but if you follow a set of core values, as CEO Craigie Zildjian does the unstableness of the market should not affect your formula for the future. The Cymbal Company continually focuses on things like quality improvement, innovation, customer collaborations, empowering employees, and avoiding complacency (Zildjian, 2007). There is not a “sec...

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...o. The best investment any manager could make is to gain an understanding of what VUCA means for their organization, and flip that risk like an aikido move redirecting the energy of the situation in a positive direction as described by Johansen (2007). Bennett and Lemoine provide one way of explaining what VUCA means to everyday managers but it’s up to each individual manager to get his/her own understanding and turn that insight into a business formula for the future like Cymbal Company CEO, Craigie Zildjian.

Works Cited

Johansen, B. (2007). Get There Early: Sensing the future to compete in the present. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Bennett, N., & Lemoine, J. G. (2014). Management: What VUCA really means for you. Harvard Business Review, pg. 1-2.
ZildJian, C. (2007, July-August). Conversation: A Formula for the future. (H. B. Review, Interviewer)

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