Responding with confidence
VUCA leadership and complex adaptive systems.
A short, focused look at responding to complexity with confidence: VUCA Prime, flexing plans while holding direction, reframing problems and leading systems rather than controlling them.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 2 hours 30 minutes
- Where
- VUCA, Uncertainty and Complexity
- Price
- £69
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
Leaders adapting plans and organisations in volatile conditions
Overview
If VUCA is the diagnosis, leaders also need a prescription. This programme works through Bob Johansen's VUCA Prime, pairing vision, understanding, clarity and agility with each condition, and explores how the plan can flex while the direction holds, with Ørsted's shift to offshore wind as a case. It examines how framing decides which solutions you can see, drawing on Toby Lowe's Human Learning Systems, and treats organisations as complex adaptive systems where command and control strains at scale. A capstone reads Apollo 13, the 2022 mini-budget and the UK Vaccine Taskforce through Cynefin, Grint, probe-sense-respond and VUCA Prime.
Aims
This programme aims to help leaders respond to complexity with confidence and discipline, holding direction while adapting plans, reframing problems to widen the solutions available, and leading systems rather than trying to control them, so that they can act before certainty arrives and adjust as they go.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Apply VUCA Prime to match vision, understanding, clarity and agility to the conditions your organisation faces while keeping its direction steady.
- Reframe a complex problem by testing inherited frames, restating it in several ways and drawing on Human Learning Systems principles.
- Lead an organisation as a complex adaptive system, judging when command and when probing fits, as shown by Apollo 13 and the Vaccine Taskforce.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Describe the four VUCA Prime pairings and explain why they run alongside each other rather than as sequential steps.
- Distinguish the plan flexing from the direction changing, and use that distinction to balance vision with agility.
- Distinguish an inherited frame from a chosen frame and explain how framing shapes both the solutions considered and the people involved.
- Describe the three Human Learning Systems principles and identify the conventional default each one is written against.
- 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 2 parts.
2 hours 30 minutes of learning.
- 01A considered answer to VUCAVUCA Prime and reframing complex problemsBitesize2 modules
- 02Living 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 hereFocus, 2 hours 30 minutes, £69
- Next stepExplore, Acting with confidence, 4 hours, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
- The whole topicImmerse, Clear heads in a complex world, 8 hours, £249. Already own the Focus? You pay £180.
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