{"id":448,"date":"2020-03-30T15:30:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/?p=448"},"modified":"2022-01-10T10:00:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T15:00:25","slug":"leading-through-volatility-and-uncertainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/2020\/03\/30\/leading-through-volatility-and-uncertainty\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading through volatility and uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How managers and organizations can navigate the COVID-19 crisis\u2014and come out stronger<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\"Jim<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Jim Lemoine<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already, articles have popped up in business media referring to\nthe COVID-19 crisis as a VUCA situation\u2014an organizational climate that is\nvolatile, uncertain, complex or ambiguous. Given my research in this area, my\nears perk up when I hear this. Often, people say VUCA environments defy logical\nplanning, with some even suggesting that the best any business leader can do is\nto make things up as they go along. In a time like this, that probably sounds\nfamiliar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organizations that emerge from the COVID-19 crisis the\nstrongest won\u2019t be the ones that gave up and waited for the storm to\npass\u2014they\u2019ll be the ones that planned proactively, paid attention to environmental\ncues, and laid the foundation to successfully reboot and recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s natural to feel like it\u2019s useless or even impossible to plan\nfor VUCA situations, but that\u2019s not a helpful impulse. My colleague Nate\nBennett, of Georgia State University, and I have proposed that most business\nclimates\u2014including the one created by the novel coronavirus\u2014are not volatile,\nuncertain, complex and ambiguous all at the same time. It might be one or two,\nbut it\u2019s generally not all four. And being able to identify which one describes\nyour climate is critical to understanding what the most effective response\nmight be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, the COVID-19 situation has been volatile, and now we\u2019re\nliving in a time of uncertainty. The prescription for this particular blend of\nVUCA attributes is to invest in information-gathering capability and then use\nthat information to build agility and contingency options for the future.\nResearch shows that with more robust information, not only does our\ndecision-making capability and effectiveness improve, but our intuition also\nleads us to better choices. All in all, the better informed we are, the better\ndecisions we make\u2014even when we don\u2019t take time to think through those decisions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the wealth of information\u2014and misinformation\u2014available on the\nnovel coronavirus, managers should prioritize building trustworthy and relevant\ninformation networks for the purpose of today\u2019s decisions and tomorrow\u2019s\nforesight. Then, with this information in hand, organizations can build agile strategies\nfor the future: planning out different levels of potential staffing and supply\nneeds, anticipating market changes that require proactive responses, and\nunderstanding what essential employees may be going through in their personal\nand professional lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That last piece is crucial because, as challenging and dangerous\nas current operational demands may be, it\u2019s the effect on employees that may\nhave the most long-term impact for organizations. Research shows we are more\nlikely to respond strongly to recent events than distant ones, and negative experiences\ngenerally outweigh positive ones. No matter how well you treated your employees\nbefore, their experience during this tumultuous time may disproportionately affect\ntheir plans for the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whenever the coronavirus crisis clears and the business\nenvironment\u2014and life in general\u2014returns to some semblance of normalcy, an onset\nof opportunities may give your employees new expectations and options. Whether\nthey respond with loyalty to you will likely depend on how they feel they\u2019ve\nbeen treated during these difficult times. For instance, many organizations\nhave been forced to furlough or lay off employees. There\u2019s no getting around\nthe financial realities that make these decisions necessary, but for\norganizations and employees who suffer through this, are the lines of\ncommunication open? Are managers being as transparent and engaged as they\nrealistically can with their current and former teams? It\u2019s easy to view simple\ncontact as a lower priority during a crisis, but the absence of information and\nevidenced concern can persuade employees that the company is not worth their\ncommitment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jim Lemoine<\/em><\/a> is an\nassistant professor of organization and human resources in the <\/em>University at Buffalo\nSchool of Management<\/em><\/a>. He is an expert on\nservant leadership, gender and leadership, and ethics and moral leadership. He\nhas written for Harvard Business Review, and his research has been cited in popular\nmedia, including Forbes, Entrepreneur and Fast Company.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How managers and organizations can navigate the COVID-19 crisis\u2014and come out stronger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[73,74,4,25,72],"class_list":["post-448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-leadership","tag-research","tag-vuca"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ubwp.buffalo.edu\/school-of-management-leadership\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}