Welcome to the world of VUCA Government. You may not have heard the term before. VUCA also applies to business, but it’s been largely forgotten about in government for a couple decades. The term VUCA was actually created by the Army War College in 1987. It describes changes in the geo-political world with the ending of the Cold War. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Sound about right for our current world?
VUCA has been a term used in some organizational development and change management circles for year. But it’s usually been used to look at leadership issues and approaches to change within a single company. Over the coming weeks, almost everything we know about how government works is likely to be turned up side down. Phrases like “Because we’ve always done it that way” will no longer apply. All the rules are being rewritten all at once, and some are being rewritten multiple times per week. How does the average citizen keep up?
Volatility
We currently live in a world where large systems are all changing at once. We have seen the global exponential spread of a virus in a matter of weeks. Most ideas don’t spread that fast. Over the past 30+ years working with government agencies, I’ve seen both state and federal agencies waste millions of dollars simply because they couldn’t move fast enough. There was always a regulation or a reason for it. Now most of those are out the window. Most of the people who work in government are comfortable working within a framework of well documented rules. People don’t always like them. But it’s nice to at least know what they are. When was the last time you allocated just your lunch break to go to the DMV? We have come to expect government to work a certain way. Now all that is changing.
Uncertainty
It would be great if someone could say that here are the new rules and life goes back to normal on the following date. It’s not happening. Sure there are a few models from the CDC and others. But how many times have we seen 5 different tracts for a hurricane from the National Weather Service? There are too many variables to know for sure. This create anxiety for both government workers and the general public. The key to looking things through a VUCA lens is recognizing this is the reality we are facing. We have to find ways to cope, because we can’t wait for it to be over.
Complexity
It’s times like these that you see how interconnected and complex government is. The first time we looked at our strategic reserves, we find out it’s not there in the quantity we needed. Things that we thought we could put off suddenly are an emergency. Delivery of services now require protective gear or new technologies that many agencies didn’t have 6 months ago. What does a family visit for a child who is foster care look like over the internet? How do you transport seniors to dialysis when you need a hazmat suit? How do you start sharing infection information when your state doesn’t have a Health Information Exchange? Or what do you do for low level offenders who are now at risk of infection by being incarcerated?
It’s almost a game of wack a mole because a change in one agency suddenly has an impact in another. Closing schools suddenly means children that receive subsidized meals need to get them from somewhere else. Many social programs are setup to provide services at tenant locations like libraries and town halls. Suddenly they have to relocate to continue offering those services if they can’t go virtual. When you do go virtual you need to make sure your participants have comparable equipment. As you solve one problem, a new one emerges in another area.
Ambiguity
Whether you are on the outside looking in, or the inside looking out, it’s hard to tell what you are looking at. Everyone is waiting for the dust to settle, the connectivity to work 100%, or supplies to be readily available. When’s that going to happen? It depend who you ask. And what is it going to look like when you are done? There are technologies that aren’t going to work the way we want. Some that we haven’t thought much about yet may play an important part. How’s that for vague? Looking back a year from now I do believe it will be true, but we are headed into uncharted waters. We don’t generally build processes or technology for situations where 1/3 of the world gets sick. We have to plan for multiple scenarios and be able to adapt quickly to which one turns out to be true.
Luckily many government organizations have already started down the path of implementing Agile principles. Whereas one of the principles of Agile is emergent design, one of the aspects of VUCA is emergent change. Historically, government agencies haven’t gone through periods of constant change. They are more used to changes every 4 years when administrations change. Now things are changing on a daily basis. We need to get used to this constant variability while we move towards the new normal – whatever that is.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
The good news is that this apparent descent into chaos does have an upside. In his book, Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World, Bob Johansen highlights the flip-side of VUCA. The volatility will eventually result in an organizational vision. This will start to anchor all the pieces that seem to be in constant motion. With this vision, people eventually develop a new level of understanding. The rules become more apparent and the regulations will adapt to what the new vision is. Complexity eventually leads to clarity. As we solve the various problems, the system will eventually normalize and become efficient.
One example of this is efficiency is the transition from basic HL7 messaging for medical purposes to Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). What was originally simple text messages for prescriptions and patient information, now covers most domains of public information. We are months away from most government agencies and health care organizations being able to exchange information with a common format. Left to the normal cycles of government, this would probably take years. Our current world situation is likely to accelerate that timeline dramatically.
The last benefit that comes from the ambiguity is agility or adaptability. Government will begin responding to the changing landscape and start changing direction faster to meet the needs. This skill will eventually result in a more efficient government organization. By the time the new normal is upon us, government agencies will have pivoted enough times that they are good at it. Assuming they keep pace with the changes, they will eventually match the need of the public. They should do it in a way the allows them to adapt to other changes that may happen in the future. We will get through this.
