Acting with confidence
Foresight, VUCA Prime, reframing and complex systems.
Half a day exploring how to act with confidence in complexity: scenario planning, adaptive leadership, VUCA Prime, reframing problems and leading complex adaptive systems.
- Level
- Explore
- Learning time
- 4 hours
- Where
- VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity
- Price
- £129
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Senior leaders steering organisations through uncertainty and reform
Overview
Once leaders understand complexity, the question becomes how to act within it. This programme sets out scenario planning from Pierre Wack at Shell to Peter Schwartz, applied to the 2026 Devolution Act, and Heifetz's adaptive leadership, with the balcony, the holding environment and Toyota after the 2011 earthquake. It works through Bob Johansen's VUCA Prime, the craft of framing and reframing with Toby Lowe's Human Learning Systems, and organisations as complex adaptive systems. A capstone reads Apollo 13, the 2022 mini-budget and the UK Vaccine Taskforce through the frameworks of the topic.
Aims
This programme aims to develop leaders who can act decisively without false certainty: rehearsing several futures, holding direction while adapting plans, reframing problems to open up better options, and leading systems with a calm and curious presence rather than reaching for command when it no longer fits.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Plan for uncertainty using a four-step scenario matrix and VUCA Prime, holding a clear direction while allowing plans to flex.
- Reframe complex problems and lead adaptive work by getting on the balcony and holding people in productive disequilibrium.
- Assess when command, probing or distributed leadership fits a system, drawing on Apollo 13, the 2022 mini-budget and the UK Vaccine Taskforce.
What you'll develop
Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:
- Distinguish forecasting from scenario planning and identify a single forecast that is being presented as a scenario exercise.
- Distinguish technical problems from adaptive challenges by asking whose behaviour, attitude or priority has to change.
- Describe the four VUCA Prime pairings and explain why they run alongside each other rather than as sequential steps.
- Distinguish an inherited frame from a chosen frame and explain how framing shapes both the solutions considered and the people involved.
- Compare the machine and weather system models of an organisation and identify the four complex adaptive system properties in your own setting.
- Identify how a single crisis moves between Cynefin domains, using Apollo 13 and the 2022 gilt crisis as examples.
Built from 3 parts.
4 hours of learning.
- 01Seeing round cornersScenario planning and strategic foresightBitesize2 modules
- 02A considered answer to VUCAVUCA Prime and reframing complex problemsBitesize2 modules
- 03Living systems, real casesComplex adaptive systems and case studiesBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity topic, also sold whole as Clear heads in a complex world.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereExplore, 4 hours, £129
- The whole topicImmerse, Clear heads in a complex world, 8 hours, £249. Already own the Explore? You pay £120.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms