"The general answer I get from observers is that the context for strategy has gotten more VUCA, a concept borrowed from military strategy, which adopted it in the late 1980s and has gotten ever more obsessed about it since. And that obsession has rubbed off on the business world. It is a bit like SWOT. The acronym rolls off the tongue and is very evocative."
"I just don't buy the notion that the world generally, or specifically the business strategy world, has gotten more VUCA and wrote about it three years ago in this series. Perhaps my feeling is informed by the particular time I entered the business work world and my subsequent tenure in it. I graduated into my first full-time job from business school in 1981, when the economy was in the middle of the third year of by far the greatest three-year inflation (39%) since WWI (1916-1918)."
The prevailing claim holds that business strategy now operates in a more VUCA environment, a concept borrowed from military strategy in the late 1980s. That concept has become pervasive in business thinking and is often invoked alongside frameworks like SWOT and OKRs. The increasing-VUCA claim is questioned as overstated given earlier periods of extreme economic turbulence. Entry into full-time business employment in 1981 coincided with severe macroeconomic conditions: a three-year inflation peak of 39%, unemployment rising toward 10.8%, and Federal Funds rates above 19%. Those historical conditions inform skepticism about labeling the present uniquely more VUCA.
Read at Fast Company
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