Why is it important to regularly clear out VUCA?

“You never step in the same river twice. The river is not the same and neither are you.”

– Heraclitus

Why is it important to regularly Clear out VUCA?  VUCA is an acronym – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity

It is important for Executives to clear out VUCA regularly. Because, VUCA causes fear, and fear causes inaction because when people don’t know what’s coming next, they tend to dwell on the dangers and hazards of what might happen.

For more about VUCA and why do you need to understand it –  Learn more about VUCA

The clients I work with take the time to create a future of what they want their world to look like in great detail. That vision needs to be clear and specific and it needs to be in writing. Otherwise, they forget.

A written vision of anything – a project, a life, a company commits you. It doesn’t leave it to chance or to your unreliable memory. You’re now standing for a future and committing to taking certain actions for that future to be realized.

You especially need that vision as a placeholder to come back to when you’ve drifted off. And everybody drifts. Everybody.

So why do we drift after we’ve been so clear about what we’re up to?

More often than not it’s just the fast pace of life and the size of the game we’re playing. Think about the last 24 hours. How many conversations have you had with people – customers, staff, your family?

If you’re like most of the leaders I deal with, you’ve put 10 to 50 different things in motion. How could your world possibly be in alignment the next day?

Heraclitus was right. You never get the opportunity to deal with the world the way you want it – because it never stays in the same damn place you left it!

And as a leader, you can’t be operating on yesterday’s news and expect to make good decisions. You have to be responsible for getting yourself clear again. That never happens by itself, clarity is always something you have to create for yourself.

At a practical level, that shows up for me in the form of a Weekly Review.

I can handle the day to day fluctuations easily enough, but I need a backstop at least once a week to survey the entire landscape of how I’m doing relative to my personal 12 Month plan. In this 30-45 minute session, which I do each Sunday, I look at my plan and assess how things are going. It gets me to focus on my objectives, it can be tremendously motivating clearing my mind of all the day to day V.U.C.A.

If you haven’t done this for a while. Shut the door. Pull out whatever commitments you have and look at them. What needs to be completed, moved, reprioritised? Get back in command of your game.

Trevor Parker is a Strategic Executive Coach and Mentor to private clients trying to excel in a world of increasing competition, pressure, negativity and stress.  Positioned as one of Yorkshire Business Insider’s power 100 and a fellow of the Institute of the motor industry, Trevor is a uniquely qualified and experienced Strategic Executive Coach.  Learn more about Trevor here.