Thursday, September 21, 2017

Life During VUCA Time


VUCA Talk
:: greg | CERM Academy ::

VUCA, an abbreviation for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, is meant to characterize the times we live in.  We can't just go by established patterns.  Alvin Toffler anticipated a somewhat shocking future, and this is it.

Greg and Vic, with their daughter Margaux, packed the Pauling House for what was a first for this audience: a talk on life during VUCA times with perspectives from the Hutchins family.

Greg talked about the challenge to continually reinvent himself given accelerated change in engineering.

Vic is in the midst of changing careers in mid life, turning herself, along with Margaux, into a computer programmer.

Margaux, age 18, has researched the return on investment for college and doesn't see how it pays off. A lot of people she knows find only low income jobs yet are already saddled with debt.

She has been homeschooling and volunteering on numerous projects, gaining life experience by leaps and bounds.  She and her mom just got back from Burning Man, a first time for both of them.

The premise of the talk, well established using slides, was that the challenges faced by each family member were highly representative of mega-trends in the workplace.  Their predicaments are our predicaments.

We're moving to a gig economy.  Artificial Intelligence is promising to automate many jobs that humans are currently paid to perform.  The nation (USA) is swimming in debt, yet only mega-spending on infrastructure is likely to keep it alive politically.

Greg has written and led workshops on Risk Based Thinking [tm] for quite some time, and through his CERM Academy counsels businesses on ways to manage risk in times of upheaval.

Learning to connect the dots and think outside the box may sound cliche, but only because such skills remain vitally important.

How we respond and adapt organizationally is at least as important as how we respond as individuals.

The talk was perfect for Wanderers and sparked conversation and debate.  Some of us are already retired whereas others are just starting their careers.  We come from many walks of life.  I didn't recognize quite a few.

Steve Crouch brought donuts.  Chips and salsa, along with soft drinks, were also served.  Deke recorded the whole presentation on his iPhone.  The projector misbehaved at first, so Vic and Margaux dashed home to get another one, but then it ended up getting the job done.

Deke (Derek)
:: derek @ LPH ::