Embrace change but don’t lose your own sense of direction in the VUCA world.
In the process of preparing for the PMP exam on June 20, I heard the term VUCA era mentioned more than once by the training teacher, so I had some superficial understanding of it by checking it. Like “Internet plus” a few years ago, it’s a buzzword. You have to master it and be able to apply it to your work life. Otherwise, you don’t even have the knowledge to tell if someone is pretending when they are talking in VUCA.
1. What is VUCA
VUCAAmbiguity, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity are the initials of the Chinese translationMr Uka.
A thousand readers will have a thousand specific interpretations of VUCA, and whatever is right for them is right for them.
My personal understanding is: don’t try to disassemble VUCA, don’t try to understand it word by word. Instead, read VUCA itself as a whole, as a word. Volatility itself is strongly associated with Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Since the factors are strongly related to each other, as long as you understand roughly what each word is concerned with, It is not necessary to speak like a book to understand the specific meaning of each word, and the difference between each other, perfect to distinguish the connotation and denotation of intellectual spirit in this scenario.
2. We’re in the VUCA era
The VUCA era is not the result of our choice, but an objective existence of historical development. VUCA describes how we live in a world of variability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.
From the perspective of my personal thinking, I think the world, life and manned space program belong to VUCA, and all changes belong to VUCA. There is only the depth of degree, but no essential difference. VUCA is an objective existence and cannot be eliminated, but it is not terrible. It is both a challenge and an opportunity. It depends on how we respond to it. The world may be VUCA, but there are laws to follow. For example, we can now predict the age of artificial intelligence. We can’t predict when it will come, but we are confident that it will come.
To exit the thesis mode, briefly combine with my automobile industry, give two examples to illustrate:
- Frequent changes in technology, marketing, management, requirements, and people
There are many changes in the work, such as the adjustment of organizational management structure, the compliance requirements of new laws and regulations, the update of guidelines, the gap of work caused by staff turnover, and the change of requirements of relevant parties. Invariance is relative, change is absolute. The former Waterfall method of development has become a dream, and the Agile Agile method of embracing change is rapidly taking over the IT market.
- The parties involved are numerous and complex
It’s hard to turn a ship around if you don’t work for a big company. For a seemingly small project, the number of related parties ranges from a few dozen to hundreds. The communication cost is very high and the efficiency is very low. I really feel that “governing a big country is like cooking a small fish” is how difficult. It is an objective fact that the cost is high and the efficiency is low. For nearly half a year, I have been trying various methods to optimize and reduce communication channels on the basis of ensuring compliance safety, so as to improve communication efficiency and reduce communication costs. There is a degree of control here, the number of relevant parties is not necessarily a problem, a sound process does create a lot of relevant parties, the intention is good, and it does ensure that the decision is not a big problem. However, it is definitely difficult to respond quickly to change. To grasp a degree and maintain a balance between the process system and rapid response, the specific balance needs to be explored in the work practice.
3. How to embrace a VUCA
The reason for embracing is that as mentioned above, VUCA is both a challenge and an opportunity, which should be viewed in a dialectical and unified way. Hugging reflects a positive mindset. As with the challenges of marathons, bungee jumping, and skydiving, you need to be prepared and adapt mentally and physically. Here are some specific guidelines for embracing VUCA, using my own industry as an example:
- Always pay attention to the industry development trend, grasp the direction
For the automotive industry, new energy vehicles, autonomous driving and software-defined vehicles are the new heading of the future. We must invest resources and focus on human and material resources to focus on development.
- Adopt agile practices, embrace change, and respond quickly
Introduce scale agility to improve project management efficiency and responsiveness to change. The nature of Agile is to embrace change and respond quickly. All of the values, principles and practices of Agile serve to respond quickly to change. Agile is one of the best tools for dealing with the VUCA era.
- Improve software quality and supplier management
Self-research is a good practice for the new car-making forces represented by Tesla, Nio and Ideo to win over traditional automakers in terms of software quality. Most of the entertainment systems of traditional car companies are outsourced, and the software quality is not very good. In the era when software-defined cars become a trend, traditional car companies must also take the step of self-research, gradually reduce outsourcing and increase self-research. At the same time, we must do a good job in the supplier management of the remaining outsourced parts, improve the quality awareness, and constantly improve the software quality on the basis of value delivery. The core of supplier management is to build the concept of long-term cooperation, treat suppliers as long-term business partners and help them grow and improve.
- Build learning organizations and teams
Learning is a powerful tool for dealing with unknown risks. Only by constantly learning new knowledge, new skills and new ideas can an organization keep pace with The Times, grasp the direction of the future, forge ahead, create new products, and obtain greater commercial returns. Building a learning organization is not just a word, it needs to be nurtured by corporate culture and organizational atmosphere. The flat organizational structure is helpful to the construction of learning organization. A good place to put the theory into practice is to implement agile. The construction of agile team and agile organization can effectively realize the popularization and development of knowledge and skills of the team and organization, and can provide an enterprise soil for the construction of learning organization and team with double results with half effort. This can be seen in agile values, such as Scrum values: commitment, focus, openness, respect, courage; XP values: Simplicity, communication, feedback, respect, courage.
4. The conclusion
I have been reviewing Extreme Programming XP recently, and I plan to do some work on translating XP official documents. Bo view and about to take, thick and thin hair, is still in the accumulation stage, do not think about the output of high-quality blog, stick to it is the key.