What is VUCA? How to manage in an increasingly unstable world

Fast Company

18-05-2025

The headlines scream it daily: Markets are fluctuating wildly, AI is transforming entire industries overnight, supply chains are fracturing, and the workforce is reshuffling at unprecedented rates. According to the World Economic Forum, 78 million new job opportunities will emerge by 2030, but this comes amid massive workforce transformation, with 77% of employers planning upskilling initiatives while 41% anticipate reductions due to AI automation. All these moving parts are playing out against a global background of financial insecurity, war, climate change, and political disruption.
The age of anxiety
Welcome to the age of VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—a concept adopted by the military to describe post-Cold War conditions but now perfectly capturing our business landscape. And here's the brutal truth. We're facing this unprecedented VUCA while collectively and perfectly depleted from the trauma of the past five years. A recent American Psychiatric Association survey reveals that 43% of U.S. adults feel more anxious than they did the previous year, with 70% particularly anxious about current events. Research from meQ also finds that depression and anxiety rates are more than four times higher for people who feel least prepared for change.
This isn't another challenging period to weather. Chaotic change isn't a bug in the code we can just rewrite. It's a fundamental feature of our era, requiring a complete reinvention of our relationship with change itself.
Why the U in VUCA Hurts So Much Right Now
In a word, trauma. The pandemic threw us into societal trauma at a level few of us had ever known. Unlike normal adversity, where mental health improves once the challenge passes, the pandemic created persistent mental health issues that have worsened even after the acute phases passed. When it comes to mental health, trauma has a long tail.
The pandemic delivered a perfect storm of traumatic conditions:
Chronic and unrelenting. Rather than a sharp, short crisis, it dragged on with no clear endpoint.
Pervasive impact. It transformed every aspect of life simultaneously—work, relationships, health, finances.
Global with no escape. You couldn't get on a plane to avoid it.
Beyond our control. Individual actions had minimal impact on the overall trajectory.
Shifting goalposts. Vaccines were promised, then delayed; variants emerged; reopenings were followed by new lockdowns.
Aversion to Uncertainty
This roller coaster of false hope and disappointment forced us to experience unrelenting uncertainty, and even in good times, our brains hate uncertainty. In a 2016 University College London study, people experienced more stress and anxiety when facing a 50/50 chance of receiving an electric shock than when facing a 98% certainty of receiving that same shock. Uncertainty was more unbearable than guaranteed pain.
This preference made evolutionary sense when stability increased the chance of survival. In today's business environment, it's a dangerous liability. The fight-flight-freeze responses that helped our ancestors survive short periods of uncertainty now paralyze us in boardrooms, strategy sessions, and daily decision-making. We are not yet equipped to handle the ongoing uncertainty of today's nonstop change.
The New Approach to Change
I often describe our current relationship to change as abusive. Another disruption shakes us off course, and we think 'this time will be different,' but it never is. The resulting uncertainty plagues us as much as before, because we haven't changed our approach.
Transforming our ingrained fear of uncertainty requires a process that rewrites our own relationship with change. We are then empowered to lead our teams and organizations through this era of VUCA without end.
Step 1: Reject our old-fashioned beliefs about uncertainty and change
We all have deep-seated beliefs about how the world should work. I call these Iceberg Beliefs because they're enormous and largely lie beneath the surface of our awareness. They often define how we react to change. Classic beliefs about change and uncertainty might sound like:
● 'If I keep my head down and work hard, certainty should be my reward.'
● 'Uncertainty is unbearable and unfair.'
● 'The more control I get, the better my life will be.'
● 'Steady as she goes wins the race.'
● 'Change is frightening. It should be resisted or ignored.'
We have to discard these beliefs. For one, they're not accurate. While hard work helps achieve our goals, it brings no guarantee of certainty or constancy. Second, they frame VUCA in a way that's not useful. VUCA is happening to us all, and 'fair' has nothing to do with it.
These beliefs push us to waste our time and energy fighting for an illusion of certainty that will never come. We must reject these naive Icebergs and replace them with beliefs that reflect reality and point to a path ahead.
Step 2: Reinvent and reimagine our beliefs about uncertainty and change
Reinventing our relationship with change means rejecting old and tired thinking and constructing new belief systems. We can ease into this by first endorsing beliefs that get us more comfortable with change.
● 'Not all uncertainty ends badly. There have been college applications, new jobs, and reorgs that turned out well.'
● 'I've been through change before, and most of the terrible stuff I worried about at 3 a.m. every night didn't actually happen.'
● 'I am powerless to change change, but I alone have the power to change my relationship with it.'
Next, we can finally turn the tables on this abusive relationship by edging toward embracing change. We'll get there with beliefs like 'there is no growth without change' and 'every change brings opportunity.' We can also recognize that some of life's most exhilarating moments—falling in love, becoming a parent, getting a promotion, starting a new venture—involve profound uncertainty and change.
Part of this work must include recalibrating our sense of what is under our control and mapping our sphere of control daily. Trauma distorts our sense of what we can and cannot influence. For example, during the pandemic, I found myself obsessively worrying about my elderly parents' health in Australia—something I had limited control over—while neglecting my children's online education happening right in front of me. I was systematically failing to control what I could because I was exhausted trying to control what I couldn't.
Step 3: Lead your people through change
With the threat of uncertainty neutralized and our beliefs about change and control starting to shift, we turn attention outward. How can we react to disruption more productively? And how can we successfully lead the people who count on us through VUCA?
Practice a growth mindset
These habits of mind help us see opportunities and stay focused through chaotic disruption. As leaders, we shift our teams' response to change when we approach challenges with principles such as:
● Abandoning perfectionism.
● Accepting inevitable mistakes.
● Reframing mistakes as progress to value.
● Encouraging creativity without judgment.
We can also educate our managers in this new approach to change, and help them learn to coach their teams to do the same. When this training happens at scale, our entire workforce is much more equipped to navigate and accelerate through organizational changes.
Adjust work to the demands of VUCA
We can't lead like 'business as usual' when VUCA rules. However, with our greater resilience in the face of change, we can skillfully shift workplace expectations and norms to reduce VUCA's impact, thereby protecting growth and well-being as changes unfold.
● Reduce Volatile Processes. Slow processes down when possible. External forces put a ceiling on how much volatility you can control, but even small reductions help. The greatest athletes visualize the game in slow motion, while they respond in real time. Deal with one thing at a time rather than everything simultaneously.
● Reduce Uncertain Outcomes. While you can't eliminate uncertainty, take actions today that narrow the field of possible outcomes. That's why we try to exercise and eat healthfully. While never a guarantee that we'll dodge illness, it renders that uncertainty small enough to set aside for now.
● Reduce Complex Problems. Break problems into smaller pieces. Think of untangling yarn—start with one strand, simplify it, then move to the next. Organizations like NASA excel at this approach, breaking seemingly impossible challenges into manageable components.
● Reduce Ambiguous Information with Clarity. The U in VUCA is future-directed, while the A—ambiguity—is happening now. During change, people will fill information gaps with their Icebergs and fears. In my research, organizations that fare better during VUCA have transparency of process and open information. It's widely held in military circles that in a battle, communication is often the first thing to fail. By the time an organization is in VUCA, it's too late to develop lines of communication. Work now, preemptively, to build strategies to keep your people informed.
The payoff is clear. Research at meQ shows that most change-ready, resilient, and supported employees are significantly VUCA-proofed, with rates of depression, anxiety, and burnout slashed by around 75% when compared with their less change-ready peers.
Taking the Power Back from Change
The ultimate reality? Periods of stability will become increasingly rare. The concept that we just need to get through this 'liminal time' before returning to normal is outdated. It's the brief periods of stability that are now liminal—unusual spaces between the predominant times of change, turmoil, and flux.
Those who can adapt internally rather than demanding external stability will be best positioned to thrive. The pursuit of stability is a fool's errand, and what we're chasing is fool's gold.
The only thing at stake is this: Our entire mental health, wellness, happiness, productivity, and performance. It's time to take back the power in our relationship with change.